This month’s Mondettes are from the luminous Laura Besley.
Laura Besley is the author of 100neHundred and The Almost Mothers. She has been widely published in online journals, print journals and anthologies, including Best Small Fictions (2021). Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, twice nominated for Best Microfiction, and she has been listed by TSS Publishing as one of the top 50 British and Irish Flash Fiction writers. She is an editor with Flash Fiction Magazine and a Creative Writing MA student at the University of Leicester.
Having lived in the Netherlands, Germany and Hong Kong, she now lives in land-locked central England and misses the sea. She tweets @laurabesley
Website: https://www.laurabesley.com/
Laura has two upcoming workshops that you should definitely check out!
Saturday, 28th January 2024 - Fine Tune Your Words: a 2-hour editing workshop with Retreat West
Saturday, 4th May 2024 - What Did You Say?: a 2-hour work on writing effective dialogue with Crow Collective
If you aren’t familiar with Laura’s work, here’s one of her pieces to start things off:
Fragments (Laura Besley | Fictive Dream)
Why I like it: the beautiful tone of the story (right from the very first line, the world comes to life: “flakes like shards of broken dinner plates fill the slate-grey sky”), the fractured structure (nine micro moments that build on top of each other to form a fascinating, non-linear journey), the sense of character and emotion that blooms around all of that.
Lunch Time (Elena Zhang | Bright Flash Fiction)
Why I like it: I love the intensity of feeling in this piece. There are some beautiful phrases which draw those emotions out, such as ‘the clicks and snaps of plastic boxes’ and ‘We speak to each other in carrot crunches’ and ‘clutching stomachs and clenching bladders’. Then as the piece reaches its crescendo, you learn why the characters are there, and your heart breaks.
Mom, can I ask you a question (Thao Votang | Milk Candy Review)
Why I like it: I love that all bar one sentence, this story is completely told in questions and, despite its experimental form, doesn’t feel at all forced. It also cuts to the heart of themes I particularly love, such as language, and in particular not speaking your mother tongue, and a disconnect from home.
PROMPT: Tell a story that unfolds completely in questions. Perhaps start with a small specific question and build towards a big universal question.
The Year of Yes (Cindy Hong | Flash Fiction Magazine)
Why I like it: this story combines two of my favourite things: second person point of view and purposeful repetition. It’s great that three quarters of the way through the story, the stream of yeses turn into a stream of nos, and that the crux of the story is revealed slowly and mostly by not saying what it is; you have to pay close attention.
Toward The End Of The Earth (Bethany Jarmul | Unstamic)
Why I like it: there is so much to admire in this tiny flash piece, from the scintillating alliteration in the opening line ‘stirs, slithers, skips in the same direction’ to its unique phrasing, such as ‘a bouquet of humans’ as well as the all-encompassing question the piece is asking. And, if that weren’t enough, it’s pared with a phenomenal illustration.
Here on Earth (Sara Dobbie | Ellipsis Zine)
Why I like it: writers often talk about the importance of an opening line, “the hook” to reel the reader in, and this piece has such a great one: ‘Everybody knows that Rosie thinks she was abducted by an alien.’ As the piece progresses, its depths are stacked upon one another until you reach that final blinding line.
PROMPT: create a character who believes something unusual (to match being abducted by an alien). Use that as a starting point and build a story from there.
There Is No R In Bath (Alison Wassell | The Phare)
Why I like it: stories, however big or small, can do some quite spectacular things. One of those things is being able to see yourself, or a version of yourself, in amongst the words, which can be especially powerful if no one around you gives you that feeling. Another thing stories can do is offer universal truths, such as in the line: ‘However far you run, you take yourself with you.’ This story is a formidable combination of the two. Full of fabulous language, it’s an absolute stunner.
Professor Malloy’s First Lesson Back Teaching University English 101 After An Extended Maternity Leave (Leila Murton Poole | NYC Midnight Challenge)
Why I like it: this is a fabulous example of how a title can add depth to a story. From the word ‘extended’, the reader can immediately surmise that something is wrong. This is confirmed with the first line ‘Dear Students’ as Professor Malloy is clearly absent. Making use of language, in this case examples of English tenses, the story unfolds in a dramatic and devastating way.
Kavita should have been home 6 minutes and 30 seconds ago (Anita Goveas | Fictive Dream)
Why I like it: I love the precision and long length of the title and there’s nothing quite like a single breathless paragraph story. This one is packed with wonderful phrases such as ‘the velvet feel of his sweaty palms’ and ‘he rhymes with duke, and fluke and sometimes when he looks at her she wants to puke’ as well as the repetition of ‘shiny and brittle’, which sums up the delicacy of both the story and teenage love (or not-quite love).
We All Want To Be Overdressed For The Afterlife (Kathryn Aldridge-Morris | Beaver Magazine)
Why I like it: like the tentacles of an octopus, this story has a tangle of different threads which work really well against each other to provide a rich and dense story.
PROMPT: Pick an animal and do some research. Find out between three and five “fun facts” about the animal and think about how you might use these in a story.
Procession (Kathy Fish | Swamp Pink)
Why I like it: I love the experimental form of this story: the slashes; the repetition (amongst others) of ‘march’ and ‘snow’ and ‘body’ and bled’; the circular story shape; as well as the warped mirroring of adjacent sentence fragments, such as: “it was a thick shag pile / a chic sad pile” and “she arranged our desks in pods / she arranged our pods in desks”
What did you think of Laura’s choices? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments - have you found a new favourite piece? Did you try out one of the prompts?
Next month’s selection will be chosen by Anika Carpenter and will be appearing (fingers crossed) on the 19th December.
Opportunities to work with Matt
Write Beyond the Lightbulb
I’m delighted to announce that I’ll be starting up my #WriteBeyondTheLightbulb courses again in 2024:
Colourful Characters (8th-21st January 2024): BOOK NOW!
Glorious Words (5th-18th February 2024): BOOK NOW!
Go With The Flow (4th-17th March 2024): ***NEW COURSE!!!***
Editing for Novels, Novellas and Novellas-in-Flash
Working on a longer project? I know from writing my own novel how invaluable it can be to get input on your work-in-progress to help you move it along to the next level. I offer a variety of editorial services including:
First Steps Review: feedback on your outline plot and first 10,000 words (for writers who are just getting going with their first draft)
Structural Review: feedback on the narrative, structure, characters and emotional journey (for writers who have completed their first draft)
Submission Review: feedback on your cover letter, synopsis and first 10,000 words (for writers who are preparing to submit to agents)
https://www.mattkendrick.co.uk/novel-editing
Short-Fiction Editing
Want an expert eye on a short story or flash fiction you are currently working on? Are you struggling to get to the heart of the story? Does the writing need a final polish at sentence level? I offer a variety of editorial services for short fiction from looking at the overall structure to approaching your writing with a magnifying glass.