MANDIRA PATTNAIK

MONTHLY BLOGPOST

Introduction: I am sure, as fiction writers, you’ve ‘played’ with the seasons. Maybe you have started a story like this “I don’t remember the first kiss. I do remember the walk back through the woods, the feeling of his arm round my shoulder, the excited fizz of that. At a certain point we stopped and he kissed me. But I don’t remember what that felt like. There’s a lot I don’t remember. But I remember the cold of that winter. The biting cold.”, if you are Cath Barton (in Brilliant Flash Fiction) OR introduced your story like this: “I become quite pretty in the winter, in the dim afternoons with sheet metal skies.”( Puloma Ghosh; CRAFT).

To provide a natural base for your story’s setting, seasonal pointers are the easiest and most commonly used. As readers, we have encountered a perked-up character in Spring, a melancholic man in winter and a confused narrator braving the stormy night as much as he braves the emotions he battles within. For setting the tone and helping readers keep track of how much time has passed between plot points, the season (and seasonal changes) in which characters interact is significant. Time passage within a story can be large (days, months, and years) or small (a few moments or minutes), and a line-or-two about the current season can orient the reader, thus helping with the story’s pacing, and grabbing readers’ attention. Because we have all experienced the diverse nature of seasons, readers can easily (and effectively) connect to the summer warmth in Kathryn Kulpa’s Three Summers Stories (“Back seat, family car, no air conditioning, blue fake leather.” and “Puffball clouds and a sky so hydrangea blue it was like a kid colored it in with a crayon.”) Notice how seasons and weather are critical tools, allowing the author to show and not tell about the familiar settings. characters’ mood. In the above excerpt, readers can infer Toni’s relaxed and content state without being told. When the universal experiences of Summer are micro-tagged to a place, you get another whole-new outcome, because of course, the experience of Summer in North America is not the same as in Sri Lanka, and the winters are not the same in Switzerland and Nigeria. Check out the experience of “Summer” by Molly Antopol: “When I was a kid we’d spend summers in Tel Aviv, squeezed into his sweaty orange kitchen, plucking olives from a bowl and spitting the pits in our palms while my mother fixed us lunch. He had a deep tan and a fat laugh, white hair parted drastically to one side. He liked to sit around in his undershirt and sandals and tell stories”. Understandably, there are pitfalls to writing seasons and weather such as telling (Temperatures were sub-zero; It was dark and it was raining) and using clichés (Spring was full of colors; Snow fell and blanketed the area). Here’s how you can avoid it:

How can you apply it to your work? The key is to catalog the input that your five senses (and even your sixth sense) take in, WHILE YOU’RE IN THE MOMENT experiencing the season:

• What catches your eyes? (birds of that season, foliage, clothes and dresses etc.)
• The feel on your skin (warm breeze, cold wind etc.)
• the aromas you can smell (rain on dry soil, for example)
• Sounds you hear (sound of pounding rain vs that elusive sound of a drizzle; what particular insect sounds are associated with the spring season; etc)
• Tastes (do you consume particular foods as per the season? what and why? etc.)

The idea is to rely on your personal experience of the season to complement that of your narrator’s. For example, I love the monsoons, especially the pregnant pause when the thunderous clouds loom across the sky, as though waiting for the clap to begin their orchestra of pounding rain. I have used that moment in The Lyrics of a Thunderstorm (EllipsisZine). Similarly, the thunderous oppression of rainless clouds find expression in Angry Vikings Beating Drums (Flash Frontier).

THIS IS YOUR PROMPT 1 [DIFFICULTY LEVEL: BEGINNERS] Write a story where a little girl in a tropical country wishes to travel to a place where it snows, and is magically transported there. Will she have a never-before adventure?

THIS IS YOUR PROMPT 2 [DIFFICULTY LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE] The frost (or drought) can be disastrous for people who depend on the land. Write a story surrounding extreme seasonal change.

THIS IS YOUR PROMPT 3 [DIFFICULTY LEVEL: EXPERT] Which season is a metaphor for the life-changing event your narrator is experiencing? Write a ‘block-of-text’ flash fiction where the story lies in the details.

SUBMISSIONS OPEN: free submissions, paying publications!!! The Paris Review (poetry), The Three Penny Review (April 15), The Temz Review (April 30), Mythaxis (April 23-30), West Trade Review (theme: Ecstasy; First week free)

New Workshop Announced!

START A DISCUSSION: Has your published work ever disappeared from the site where it appeared? Did you reach out to the editors and receive a response? What remedial course did you choose?

MANUSCRIPT CONSULTATIONS: This April, I am offering a one-week turnaround for the first four applicants only in case of flash fiction. Apply early. Click here for more.

PRO-TIP: When revising, cut down on articles first, then adjectives, then adverbs.

April’s blogpost will be “All About Poetry”. I am looking to run a few short interviews with poets who have recently published poetry chapbooks to learn about their journey to publishing collections and their favorite themes. If you are one, do get in touch in here or through my X account

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