How An Old Country Song Taught Me To Write Better Flash Fiction

It is all about the story

Writing short fiction is hard. The author must capture your attention quickly, then using a minimum amount of words, keep it until the very end. If you are lucky, you can add a surprise ending that leaves the reader thinking or at least brings a smile to their face.

Much has been written on the subject, of how to be a better fiction writer. Too often it encourages writers to give more detail than necessary. Therein lies the problem. If you write too many words you risk boring the reader to death. Too few words and you fail to get your message across.

What’s the point of this article? The point is don’t use more words than necessary to tell your story.

Fiction vs. Non-fiction

In the last few years, I have transitioned from a non-fiction technical writer to a fiction author. The evolution has not been swift. I find myself falling back on old habits of being specific and leaving nothing to the imagination. When you write a technical manual accuracy is critical. Leaving details to the reader’s imagination is a recipe for disaster.

Let their imagination go wild

As a fictional author, I don’t have to tell the reader everything. I only need to stimulate the reader’s imagination. With each of my new books, I have worked to improve my storytelling by involving the reader.

Back in June 2022 I wrote an article (you can read that article here) for one of my business blogs. I wanted something out of the ordinary and chose to write about an old Country & Western song that changed the course of popular music back in 1960.

The song El Paso by Marty Robbins is a classic that broke the charts in several genres. It is a tale about a man who falls in love with a cantina dancer. His unrequited love for her would be his demise. The song won numerous awards and still gets played on radio stations worldwide some 60 years after its release.

The lyrics of the song are only 466 words long, about as long as a typical Flash Fiction story. There is no chorus, and the story ends with a predictable outcome.

You don’t have to be a country music fan or a fan of music in general. The story is so well told anyone who listens is captivated by the fairytale. Not a word is wasted. Each one adds to the tale, evoking emotion and painting a picture.

After listening to the song several times, I decided I need to learn how to tell a story from the beginning, through the middle, and to the end without using too many words.

Since that blog post, I have used the lyrics of that song as an example of how to tell a story. When I am writing the scenes for my latest novel, I will sometimes open a second window on my computer. I find it helps remind me to tell a simple, compact story from beginning to end. No wasted words, no giving the reader more than they need to imagine every scene.

For those of you who have read this far down, you can find a cool version of El Paso in a YouTube video here.

The video is 4 minutes, and 43 seconds long. You don’t have to like the music, but you have to admire the way the story is told.

A copy of the lyrics can be found at: https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/martyrobbins/elpaso.html

If you are someone who likes to write Flash or Micro fiction you can learn a lot from this simple song. I only wish I could write short stories this good.

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