Do you write short fiction but long to s-t-r-e-t-c-h those tight little 55ers, flash pieces, and short stories into longer, publishable work? Do you have binders full of short pieces with characters you’d love to flesh out? Are you dying to tell the rest of these stories? If so,The Short and Long of Itis for you! Award-winning short fiction writer Paul Alan Fahey shows you how to expand and adapt your brief creations into longer, more satisfying stories, plays, novellas, and novels pitch perfect for publication in the e-age. This book will help you practice expanding your short fiction. Through detailed examples and hands-on exercises, you’ll learn how to: Adapt 55 fiction into flash fiction;Adapt flash fiction into short stories and plays;Adapt flash memoir into personal essays;Write a tight logline;Develop a story theme;Build three-act structure; andDevelop characters and enhance backstory.So grab a copy today and start writing longer stories tomorrow!

The Short and Long of It

Here’s another example of adapting flash, but this time we’ll focus on expanding a flash memoir to a longer personal essay. When I edited the anthology, The Other Man: 21 Writers SpeakCandidly About Sex, Love, Infidelity, & Moving On, I discovered that having lived with one partner—now my husband—for forty years, I had very few other man stories. We weren’t angels, believe me, but I couldn’t recall anything that worked for the book. After looking through my earlier stories, I happened upon a short memoir, Where We Going?that I thought might work. (A bit of warning here as the piece is rather explicit.) The flash piece had its origins in this 55er:


Two in the morning. Bartender gives last call. A guy holding a bottle of beer leads me out to his BMW, says he’s a professor.


Inside the car, I ask, “Where we going?”


Chapter 21