I’m very interested in framing: what a story shows and what it doesn’t through its words. This is especially pertinent with the 100-word Friday Fictioneers stories I write every week, which have to show a complete story through a 10×10 aperture. That often means that important details and implications are left up to the reader to infer. Sometimes they do and sometimes they come away with a very different message from what I put into it.
Last week, I wrote the story Holding the Bridge, about a man guarding a bridge to a resort while hungry people came begging and eventually swarmed across the river anyway. Most commenters assumed he had been killed by the mob, which was an interesting idea and worked with the story, but wasn’t what I had intended at all. So, with more words to work with, here is the story as I intended it.
Holding the Bridge – A Story Reframed
I stood on the bridge in my new uniform, picking at the hat’s tight elastic under my chin.
“It’ll stretch out soon,” my boss said. “Once you’ve been here long enough. Remember, this is an easy job: just make sure no one comes over this bridge without a pass.”
He was right: it was a cushy job at that forgotten back entrance to the resort, sitting in my sagging lawn chair and pulling the sticky hat elastic away from my sweaty skin. Sometimes the shouts of rich vacationers found their way through the dense foliage but mostly there was no sound but the trickle of water and the buzz of vampiric mosquitoes.
Peaceful, at least, until the famine came and desperate people came begging. Then the door at the end of the bridge was kept locked and I was not given the key. Just keep them away, will you?
They came one by one at first. Just a cup of water. Just a bite of bread.
Sorry. I wish I could.
Then more and more. Damn you, you little brat. Let us in!
Sorry.
Where’s your humanity?
Sorry.
I stood at the end of the bridge with that single, hollow word on my tongue while my freshly-pressed company hat soaked up my sweat and its accursed elastic choked off my air supply.
I watched as they finally threw sticks and garbage into the river, choking the flow and making the bridge that I could not provide. As darkness fell, I took off my jacket and added it to their effort.
Soon they started to clamber across. Just before I went down to help them across, I pulled off the hat, snapping the elastic.
It never stretched out, I thought. I wouldn’t have wanted it to.
The Green-Walled Tower 
December 16th, 2014 at 11:10 pm
This one is better!
December 16th, 2014 at 11:34 pm
Thanks! I like it better too.
December 17th, 2014 at 10:26 am
[…] Isn’t it interesting how a story can change when seen through the window of a hundred words? Last week’s story, Holding the Bridge generated a lot of interesting ideas about what had happened to the guard on the bridge, which fit with the hundred-word version. Click here to read the longer story about what really happened on the bridge. […]
December 17th, 2014 at 4:49 pm
Dear David,
This is quite a different story. I like them both, actually, and this is one of the things I love about flash fiction. Any story requires a degree of trust in the audience. Flash fiction forces the author to choose which details to share and which to leave open-ended. In critique forums, I often find myself frustrated with readers who ask for details that simply won’t fit in the prescribed number of words. I intentionally do not write for lazy readers. If you want the details laid out for you, pick up a tome by Charles Dickens or Nathaniel Hawthorne. If you want a story that holds a mystery or two, read David Stewart or Marie Gail Stratford.
If you want to read more of my thoughts on flash fiction and how to write it (not that you need a how-to), you might enjoy these two articles:
http://mariegail.hubpages.com/hub/Flash-Fiction-A-Writers-Guide
http://mariegail.hubpages.com/hub/What-Flash-Fiction-Isnt-Writing-Tips-for-Short-Short-Stories
All my best,
Marie Gail
December 17th, 2014 at 10:37 pm
Thanks for the links. I’m not sure if I’ve read those before, but I’ll take a look. You’re right that especially with short fiction, the reader has to take a bigger role in unraveling the story. Personally, I like a story that makes the reader guess at the end. Uncertainty is a wonderful spice in a story.
December 17th, 2014 at 11:56 pm
Still well written, but I preferred the shorter one 🙂
When I read the first one, I also took the view that they swarmed the bridge, and took the rookie out… I think the dark view gives the story more punch.
Cheers
KT
December 18th, 2014 at 9:54 pm
Thanks, KT. I like hearing various opinions on things. Sometimes it’s better to leave more implied.