Postcards Home by Allison Symes

Image Credits:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay images.

Holiday season is often when most of us will continue to write but not to our usual extent given we all need breaks.

 

But, once back again, have you given some thought as to what your characters would write if they were on holiday? What would such things tell you about them? Better still, what would your readers make of their postcards “home”?

Now this is a great flash fiction exercise. Imagine one of your characters is sending a postcard home. Allow them to send just one. It has to count! What would they write and who to? Is the recipient expecting a card? Where would the card come from? Answering those questions should spark story ideas (as would the recipient’s likely response). 

This is an apt exercise for me to suggest because flash fiction has had many names in its time and postcard fiction is one of them. Usually you would get up to 100 words on a standard postcard (possibly 50, depending on how large your handwriting is!). So this exercise comes with its own word count limit. I’ve found this useful because it is one of the ironies of flash fiction the restriction on  word count encourages greater creativity. Well, you do have to make the most of the word count you do have.

So why not pick a character you’ve already created and get them to write a postcard home to another character of yours? Once done, put it away for a few days, then have another look at it. What strikes you about what your character has said here? Has it made you see them differently or confirmed traits you thought they had but weren’t immediately apparent? That can be useful as you can go back through your draft and see if you need to show this more clearly in the story.

Another thought - take the same character and imagine them writing a postcard to you, their creator. What do you think they would want to tell you? (Give me better lines may well be one of your thoughts here - it was the first which occurred to me!).

On a more serious note, would your character want you to reveal something you haven’t yet shown in the story? Or is there something which, if they were given the choice they would prefer to keep secret? Naturally you won’t do that as this secret could well prove to be a useful part of their characterisation for you. It could certainly be a great plot development. 

Putting yourself in your characters’ shoes can reveal a great deal about them. Okay, you may not like everything which may come up here but that’s good. Doesn’t that show your character “lives”? If they can make you react, they will do the same for potential readers.

Hope you have fun with the postcard exercise. (Members of the Flash Fiction Group - do have a go at this and let me know how you get on!),