Flash Fiction with an Odd Pinch: Harnessing the Uncanny for Emotional Resonance with Marie Gethins

Course Summary

The most distilled prose form, flash fiction relies on suggestion—layered meaning that is off the page. Utilising the strangely familiar, yet not quite right, immediately engages the reader’s subconscious and adds emotional depth. Participants will read and discuss examples of uncanny flash fiction, learning how to incorporate techniques that can enrich their own work. Four areas provide inspiration: real-world, fairy tales/mythology, history and science/science fiction. Short bursts of writing time will generate initial drafts, with students having the option to submit full drafts for comprehensive individual critique.

Course Outline

Week 1: Introduction, reading and analyses of real-world based uncanny flash fiction. How strange elements enhance each story and why they work. Writing prompts inspire participants’ journey into real-world weirdness.

Week 2: Examples of flash fiction incorporating fairy tales will be considered for pathways to add emotional resonance. Prompts provide participants the opportunity to test their own interpretations.

Week 3: Mythological-based flash can add new perspectives to modern concepts and situations. Examples spanning a variety of approaches will be considered with prompts for students to test out their own ideas.

Week 4: Reinterpreting history through a fractured lens is the focus with discussion of examples on how they do or don’t work. Prompts will fuel ideas.

Week 5: Science – using discoveries as a springboard, tired plotlines can be transformed. After considering examples, participants can try prompts to explore fresh directions.

Week 6: Science Fiction are ripe subjects for unsettling flash. Examples will be discussed, and sources given for idea generation. Participants will use prompts to try-out flash fiction in this inspiration area.

Course Outcomes

Participants will gain techniques to harness the uncanny in six subject areas for flash fiction with greater emotional depth. Post-course individual critiques are available to participants on up to 1000 words of material generated during the workshop.

Marie Geth­ins’ work appears in Winter Papers, Australian Book Review, Reed, The London Magazine, Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology, The Lonely Crowd, NFFD Anthologies, Fictive Dream, Pure Slush, Bath Flash Fiction Anthologies, FlashBack Fiction, Jellyfish Review, Litro and many others. Marie is a recipient of a Frank O’Connor Bursary, a residency at Banff Center for Arts and Creativity and a Hawthornden Fellowship. She is the flash fiction editor for Banshee, co-edits for flash ezine Splonk, critiques for Oxford Flash Fiction Prize, and lives in Cork.