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Everyone I know has recurring dreams. Whether they admit it or not, I bet everybody does. In my least favorite recurring dream, everyone around me is working intently, purposefully, performing with great gusto tasks that seem connected, but nonsensical to me. In another variation, all the people around me urgently scurry like Mad Hatters toward some compelling destination completely unknown to me. I can't fathom what they are doing, where they are going or why, and I feel a great reluctance to admit my ignorance, trying desperately to fit in.
That much is a very real emotion to me. I was very close to my father during my childhood, following him everywhere, and I learned early that he didn't like curious children interrupting him with myriad queries. So my agile child's mind learned to still its questions, to observe and absorb and puzzle things out for myself.
I think this skill has given me a leg up in life. I've taught myself computer programming, web site design and development, network management, project management — all manner of complicated, esoteric skills. By seeming to understand concepts that I don't yet grasp, I paint myself into corners that only accelerated learning and leveraging what I already know as a frame of reference for new concepts can rescue me from.
One of my most vivid memories of this phenomenon is the difficulty I had understanding a basic concept of modern technology — electronic data storage. My mind could not make the leap between something like the written word — meaning conveyed by symbols — and the binary memory system of computer storage. I must have read that chapter in the Fundamentals of Data Processing at least a dozen times, without any glimmer of comprehension.
After the thirteenth (or possibly the thirtieth) pass at this idea, I found myself so frustrated I began crying. My significant other had been quietly encouraging as I wrestled with alien principles, but he saw that I clearly needed a break. He took me out to a restaurant with a turn-of-the-century (19th to 20th) theme. We were standing in the vestibule watching a player piano make music from a large moving roll of punched paper. Suddenly, the idea of binary information storage thundered into clarity in my mind.
So what has this got to do with writing?
When someone spends a day, a week, or a month of their life constructing a work of literature, they've immersed themselves deep in a universe that exists only in their own mind. One of the first problems to be solved in successful flash is succinctly conveying a sense of that universe to the reader.
Many of the submissions we read fail this first problem. The reader is dropped into the middle of the story without any idea of where we are or why we are there. These "where?" and "why?" questions seem to compound throughout the work, becoming louder and more frequent until they drown out whatever story the writer is trying to tell.
I know that when I read stories or essays or poems like this, I try to apply my puzzle-solving skills to them. I look at them from all sorts of angles, read them two or three or more times until I either make a connection with something I can understand, or I give up and decide that the writer has simply not provided adequate context for it. And, I surmise, if I can't decipher it, I have to assume that our readers won't either.
This is not to say that writers need to provide complete dossiers for the characters in their stories, snapshots of the landscape, or a map with a big arrow saying, "You are here." But the writer does need to provide enough of the back story and clues on the protagonist's motivation and environment to quell those pesky who-what-where-why-how questions that interrupt the narrative drive.
If you're like most writers, you want the reader with you, not questioning your competency at your chosen task. The quickest way to do that is to make them feel comfortable in your universe. So show them around, introduce them to the gang — but do it quickly. Remember, this is flash!
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