spoken on Radio 4

First of all, the Radio 4 discussion I took part in on The World Tonight last Thursday had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I had a couple of stories on Radio 4 back in August. 4 is a big, many-tentacled beast, and when the producers got in touch with me they didn't even know my name, let alone my history (such as it is) with the channel.

This is because the discussion I was asked to contribute to was about short stories (and specifically the impact of short story writer Alice Munro winning the Nobel Prize for Literature) and so I was contacted via Liars' League. This happened at 2.34pm on 10th October, and by 8pm that evening - having dashed out of dinner with my parents - I was in the studio. So what was it like?

written flash fiction

I have a confession to make: for the last four years I’ve been asking my short story students at City to write stories of exactly 100 words (“drabbles”) as an exercise, yet I rarely write flash fiction (under 1000 words) myself. I’ve published nearly 40 short stories since starting to write prose fiction, and only four have been 1000 words or less. And given that the next Liars' League is a flash fiction special, I've been reading an awful lot of flash recently (60 stories, to be precise).

A youthful and toothsome Drabble

I am, as anyone who’s read some of the other blog posts on here (average length 1000-2000 words) will know, naturally prolix. Brevity doesn’t come easily to me. If I’m going to sit down and write something, I usually want to spend a good few hours on it: I want to explore the setting, the character and the narrative arc at my leisure. I want, in short, to write without limits – especially word limits. I’m sure some of you know what I mean. Putting a bunch of words on a page has never been a problem for me – but the right words (and only the right words) in the right order, now that’s the challenge …

So last year, when I was asked to teach a Flash Fiction workshop at a university open day, I knew had to get some practice in – reading and writing it. Luckily I had to hand Sawn Off Tales by David Gaffney and Tania Hershman’s collection The White Road (both are especially noted as authors of shorter fiction).