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

My flash memoir has the voice of a much younger, inexperienced man, someone willing to ride miles in a car with a complete stranger for a fleeting moment of sexual gratification. The personal essay has an altogether different voice—an older, wiser, and more mature one, someone looking back over the years at the callowness of his youth and perhaps regretting it. There’s also more backstory in the complete essay, while the memoir has an anecdotal, in the moment feel to it.


Write a one-sentence logline for a short memoir you want to expand and adapt to a personal essay.


Does your flash memoir have a theme? If so, what is it?


Does it have a distinct opening, rising action, climax, and conclusion?


What is the inciting incident? For example, in Where We Going?the inciting incident happens the moment the older man leads the young narrator out of the bar and into his car.


Chapter 22