The 3 Ds

I've recently heard 2 female competition judges discourage writers from entering stories about "The 3 Ds" - "Death" (especially of babies), "Dementia" and "Domestic violence" - there are many entries on those themes. Increasingly, the same advice applies when sending to magazines - when the success rates get into the 1% range, and editors need to quickly read 100s of submissions, stories need to stand out, and editors don't want too many stories on a single theme in a magazine.

I often try to write stories that are quiet. I've even tried to write about middle class families who have middle class problems. The characters are not so content that "happiness writes white" (i.e. that you don't see the white ink on the white paper) but nobody dies, goes mad, or gets hit. In fact, nothing much happens. If artists can do still lifes with apples, grapes and shadows, why can't I do a story about getting the kids off to school and taking a thoughtful walk back along a stream?

Not only do I leave out dramatic events, but I'm careful with the language. Any striking phrase/image that comes to mind when I'm writing prose tends to be diverted into the poem I'm currently writing (which becomes a rag-bag of fireworks at best).

Even if the resulting story is good, its effect will be cumulative, hidden in plain sight. Judges and editors don't always have the time to delve. So where do the carefully wrought mainstream stories go? In a book I suppose.

As a compromise I sometimes put eye-catching phrases in the first and final paragraphs, hoping to convince judges/editors that it's worth reading more. And I'm more careful about titles than I used to be.

Flash Fiction Festival 2025

I'm back from the Flash Fiction Festival at Bristol. It's the 4th consecutive one I've been to. About 120 people. Full immersion. Less than 20% males, I'd estimate.

I've come to use it as an annual review - of my writing, and also the state of Flash. I think the Flash written nowadays is better than ever, but the readership has plateau'd, and mag/book publication chances have if anything shrunk. Newcomers can develop quickly now that there are more supporting resources. Meanwhile I've been static. I can feel crowds of writers whizzing by.

The weather and the karaoke were too good for the quiet room to be needed - a shame, because some useful resources were there.

I liked nearly all the workshops. One that I hadn't expected to like - but did - was about non-writing issues that affect writing (writing for the wrong reasons; finding time/places to write; how to take breaks).

I came away with "This alone could save us" (Santino Prinzi), "In the debris field" (3 NiFs), "Landmarks" (NFFD anthology 2015), "Sleep is a beautiful colour" (NFFD anthology 2017), "Root, Branch, Tree" (NFFD anthology 2020), "And we lived happily ever after" (NFFD anthology 2022).

Stand-up comedy and humorous literature

[Some preliminary notes about connections between the two media.]

Literature

• Novels - Some commonly mentioned comic novels are -
  • "Lucky Jim" by Kingsley Amis
  • "Ulysses" by James Joyce (a comedy according to Joyce)
  • anything by PG Wodehouse
  • "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller
  • "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams
  • "Pride & Prejudice" by Jane Austen

  Sometimes the characters have all the best lines. Sometimes (as with the Montelbano stories) there's a "clown" character. Sometimes (as with Jane Austen) the narrator is crucial to the effect, using dramatic irony.

  Comedy can be used to contrast with another effect - whodunits and tragedies use it.

  A comedian can be the main character - in "A horse walks into a bar" by David Grossman (which won the 2017 Man Booker International Prize) the narrator is a stand-up comedian.

• Short stories - Lorrie Moore ("Birds of America", etc) and Katherine Heiny write comic short stories. The story writer (and novelist) A.L. Kennedy has done stand-up.
• Poetry - Wendy Cope, Pam Ayres, Roger McGough, John Hegley, etc

Stand-up comedy

Comedians and writers have some shared interests. For a start they try to engage the audience -

• Asking questions - comedians ask "Any Germans here?" Writers can ask questions too.
• Relatability - comedians mention something that relates to the audience (help-lines; car-parking apps) - observational comedy. Writers can do that as well. What do you do with your spare hand when brushing your teeth or putting petrol in your car?
• Confession/cringe-comedy - comedians engage the audience with sad/embarrassing autobiography - but is it true? It's a ploy novelists use too - how much of "All Fours" by Miranda July is autobiography?

Some standard comedy devices can be used by writers -

• Connect 2 random things - used both by poets and comics when writing material
• Surprise - a common exercise is to take a statement and think of an unlikely continuation. Better still, choose the least obvious of a few interpretations. E.g. given "My wife's a heavy sleeper", one continuation could be "she's no lighter when she's awake"
• Callback - refer back to an earlier detail (the more this sounds like an ad-lib, the better)
• One-liners - you can keep a handy list. "She ... dons a pair of oversized sunglasses that make her look like an insane welder" (Katherine Heiny)

See also

• Jokes and poetry

My rejection spreadsheets

My spreadsheets of rejections are growing. Here are their current sizes -

	Magazines	Texts
Prose	165	95
Poetry	61	136

Conclusion: I write more poetry than prose, yet I send to many more prose magazines than poetry magazines.

Here are the stats for how easily I give up -

	Times a mag has rejected me	Most times a text has been rejected
Prose	6 (Interpreter's House)	17
Poetry	34 (Acumen)	20

Conclusion: I'm just as stubborn with prose as with poetry, though I tend to give up sending to prose magazines if they've rejected me a few times. The reason I've had so many rejections from Acumen is that they've been around a long time, and between the rejections I've had successes too.