Reinventing the Rules (inspired by Richard Brautigan) FULL

Story model and prompt for the first week of January

Please read the below story. It’s by my favorite flash fiction writer of all time, Richard Brautigan. It was published in the iconic Brautigan story collection REVENGE OF THE LAWN (1971). Brautigan is one of the most important and significant fathers of modern microfiction.

A High Building in Singapore

Richard Brautigan

It's a high building in Singapore that holds the only beauty for this San Francisco day where I am walking down the street, feeling terrible and watching my mind function with the efficiency of a liquid pencil.

A young mother passes by talking to her little girl who is really too small to be able to talk, but she's talking anyway and very excitedly to her mother about something.

I can't quite make out what she is saying because she's so little. I mean, this is a tiny kid.

Then her mother answers her to explode my day with a goofy illumination.

"It was a high building in Singapore," she says to the little girl who enthusiastically replies like a bright sound-colored penny, "Yes, it was a high building in Singapore!"

Photo by Jeyakumaran Mayooresan on Unsplash

***

Brautigan was known from reinventing the rules.

Here, he “tells it” as a slant way of “showing it”. He ignore the fourth wall, talking to the reader directly as an aside, saying “I mean, this is a tiny kid.”

What does this accomplish? He makes us his co-conspirator with that perfect little gesture. Puts his arm around us and trusts us to “get it” as fellow travelers in life.

Employing your own peculiar sense of humor, pathos and discomforts, are great tools for crafting form from what may seem to the untrained eye like nothingness.

The way the narrator is rescued from vagueness and malaise by a randomly overheard mother/child conversation breaks our hearts in the best way. It is the simplest, truest feeling in the world.

In fact, there is so much unspoken sadness and love for goodness and connection in this story that it kills me every single time I read it. It is most importantly a mysterious piece of fiction, and though it sounds silly to say:

“Now, write a mysterious story that not even you understand"… Ha. But that’s what I’d like you to do! It’s your prompt for this week.

Prompt:

I’d like for you to try and write a story (CNF or fiction) in the first person about an experience one can’t possibly pin down, keeping Brautigan’s example in mind. Set it in a very specific place. Include an overheard snippet of dialogue if possible. See if you can set in our minds the way the narrator is feeling in the first paragraph. Then, allow something random to happen that changes the energy. Most importantly, try and employ your real, honest voice and way of saying things..

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