Flash Fiction and the Theory of the Naked Kiss

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Let’s conger up a loving couple in their home at night taking a bubble bath together.  The man’s back is against the porcelain and the woman lays back against him.  Heat waves rise from the bubbles in the water.  The man and woman each have a glass of champagne in their hands and on the floor the bottle of champagne is in a bucket of ice.  From the CD player on the sink comes the music of sweet romance.  The real loving for this couple will take place in the bedroom after the bubble bath.  The bubble bath is the stuff of foreplay.  And nice when you can get it.  In flash fiction, the introduction is the foreplay.  And there’s no time for it.  This does not have to be a bad thing.

Flash fiction is about the hot passion of action.  Something had better be happening and it had better happen quick.  A flash fiction story would start with the couple in bed in the middle of a naked kiss.

Now during the kiss, during the actual love making, the reader will find out everything he or she needs to know about this couple: a little of their history, approximate ages, why they’re in bed together, what is the main conflict of the story and what the resolution is. 

The flash fiction writer has to be careful that the hot action in the bedroom does not push the conflict of the story off center stage.  Unless the bedroom action is the story, the action must always remain in the background as a support to whatever is the main story.

Maybe the main story is about trust or intimacy or trying something new in the marriage.  The action in the bedroom would certainly support and illustrate the main story.  As a matter of fact the bedroom scene had better illustrate the main story.  If it doesn’t, there is no reason to have the couple making love in the bedroom.  They may as well stay in the bubble bath.

So, flash fiction is like sex.  It just assumes that the foreplay just ended and the main event has begun.