Writing on Sudden Fiction … Sun-baked dust and cordite
January 10, 2015
Sudden Fiction is like a “quick” draw contest: prompt > draw > fire.. It’s all over in nine hundred and ninety nine words or less. This ain’t no time to choke there hombre. Like the sun at high noon, your mouth goes dry, and it’s time to show what-your-made-of; after all, isn’t that what people like us like to do … write.
Sudden Fiction projects from my pen using as a mode of creativeness: the objective correlative. or some such. As much as I love and use adverbs, and adjectives to color my long verse; the metaphor fills my needs so much the better in this genre of sun baked dust and cordite.
I’ve always liked this following piece I put together some time ago. It just kind of rolls down-hill and ends on an emotional step.
Dead at High Noon
by: G.K. Brannen
Cordite filled the air;
twas in my nostrils, twas in my eyes,
twisted left, twisted right
Cordite filled the air
Poncho was fast,
faster’n I ever seen.
Poncho was quick,
quicker’n I ever been.
The gun jumped this away,
my finger stroked the trigger.
Muh arm numbed right away;
the air got stiller.
The middle of the
street. Blood-guts “n”
gore. Dog howl, hoot-owl
night-owl gone.
The breeze reeked of
spent-powder, deadly as
we go. Everth’n that
was dead at high-noon.
Writing “flash or sudden” fiction has just kind of rolled on me like a soft tide. I’m in the process of longer short story writing and, of course, academia writing; thus I need a mental break, and short poetic/non-poetic, rhyme and non-rhyme prose allows that relief to the psyche: bless our craniums anyway.
I’m sure I missed something I wanted to say … it’ll come to me.
best,
G.