Fatal Light by Richard Currey is about a young soldier that was drafted into the Vietnam war and his experiences in the war and after he comes home. This story was an excellent example of flash fiction. Flash fictions is essentially a story with beginning middle and end but with a very low word count. Instead of using lengthy descriptions flash fiction often describes short vivid scenes almost like a snap shot that moves the story along. In flash fiction stories the reader is often has to connect the dots between short chapters and make inferences.
The form definitely benefits from the novel Fatal Light. In the book each chapter is very brief the longest being about four pages but most around one or two. This style of writing seemed to be more realistic to actual memories then The Things They Carried. Each chapter is a glimpse of an important event which reminded me of flashes of memories I have had. I don't always remember every little detail of each moment of my life instead memories get squashed together or only certain details remain. This made the book seem very realistic almost like it was a diary of the soldier.
Another thing that i noticed in each chapter was that because each chapter was so short the details that were in it were very raw. For me this helped evoke the emotions the soldier was feeling at the time because there seems to be nothing separating the writers thoughts from the reader. For example in flash fiction and in the book there were very little pauses. The flow of the story was very fast and there were no pauses for flowery adjectives and descriptions that sometimes take the reader out of the moment. This kept me involved and allowed me to notice the changes in character and his feelings as the war progressed and after he got home. For example during the war his language changed and became very terse, crude and full of anger. When he returned home the chapters had a sad, lonely and depressed feeling about them as he tried to cope with returning home to a life that seemed very foreign to him.
Flash fiction is a very "real" form of writing that though short and not very detailed is very powerful and moving non the less.
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Fatal Light by Richard Currey is about a young soldier that was drafted into the Vietnam War and his experiences in the war and after he comes home. This story was an excellent example of flash fiction. Flash fiction is essentially a story with beginning middle and end but with a very low word count. Instead of using lengthy descriptions, flash fiction often describes short vivid scenes almost like a snap shot that moves the story along. In flash fiction stories the reader is often has to connect the dots between short chapters and make inferences.
ReplyDeleteThe form definitely benefits from the novel Fatal Light. In the book each chapter is very brief the longest being about four pages but most around one or two. This style of writing seemed to be more realistic to actual memories then The Things They Carried. Each chapter is a glimpse of an important event which reminded me of flashes of memories I have had. I don't always remember every little detail of each moment of my life instead memories get squashed together or only certain details remain. This made the book seem very realistic almost like it was a diary of the soldier and not a narrative.
Another thing that I noticed in each chapter was that because each chapter was so short the details that were in it were very raw. For me this helped illustrate the emotions that the soldier was feeling at the time because there seems to be nothing separating the writer’s thoughts from the reader. For example in flash fiction and in the book there were very few pauses. The flow of the story was very fast and there were no pauses for flowery adjectives and descriptions that sometimes take the reader out of the moment. This kept me involved and allowed me to notice the changes in character and his feelings as the war progressed and after he got home. An example of this was when in the war, his language changed and became very terse, crude and full of anger. When he returned home the chapters had a sad, lonely and depressed feeling about them as he tried to cope with returning home to a life that seemed very foreign to him.
Flash fiction is a very "real" form of writing; it has immediacy, which even though it is short and not very detailed it is very powerful and moving none the less.