We catch up with one of our newest authors Tom O’Brien to discuss his novel, learn about his writing process and find out how the brilliant Homemade Weather came to be.
Homemade Weather started life as a short story that I was never quite able to land and so put aside for years, but kept feeling pulled back to as I felt the core of it was good.
There are many ways of writing a novella-in-flash, and this book is an example of a few of them. It was a partially a deconstruction and rebuilding of a longer piece. As I explored more of Celia’s life, her story opened out. The more I rummaged, the more I found these nuggets I could shape into flash. In some cases, these had an element of story in them, in others I had to work some movement into a vignette. And of course, many couldn’t stand alone at all and had to be folded into other stories or cut. In the end, the original story became the spine of Book 3 of Homemade Weather, while the first two little Books grew on their own.
But while it was partially a job of deconstruction, there was quite a lot of new build too. As I ventured into other areas of Celia’s life, I met characters who didn’t exist in the original story or who were not developed and so on. These characters, and Celia’s relationships with them spurred new stories and/or needed to find ways to be expressed. It was during these processes that Homemade Weather came to life in the way that any piece has to at some point.
That process of deconstruction/rebuilding, as well as making pieces of flash to fill a story need are only a few of the approaches for writing a novella-in-flash. Building out from a single piece of flash, starting a story from scratch, attending to a theme, an idea or an emotion are only a few of the other options available, and in fact the form can be much looser than that.
I tried a similar technique to how I approached Homemade Weather for another novella-in-flash based in this world but this time joining two stories and intertwining them. It was interesting that this next piece refused to take a similar shape to Homemade Weather but still did respond to being broken down into flash-sized pieces.
If there is a lesson, other than that every story is different, it might be that the more options you give yourself, the more chance you have to allow the story to find the shape it wants to be.
About the author:
Tom O’Brien is an Irishman living in London. He’s been nominated for Pushcart and Best Microfictions consideration and has flash fiction in Ellipsis Zine, Spelk, Reflex, Blink-Ink and many more. His novella-in-flash Straw Gods is published by Reflex Press.
Reviews:
“A beautifully written, deeply satisfying novelette-in-flash that revealed more depth with each read. A master class in both resonance and the use of white space. I could not get this story out of my head. A deserved winner.” – Damhnait Monaghan, novelette-in-flash judge on Homemade Weather