Short Story Techniques: False Documents Plus Healthy Writers Club

Clockwork Phoenix 4 is open guidelines here, and I'm re-reading Clockwork Phoenix 3. Editor, Mike Allen, ran a successful Kickstarter campaign, and Clockwork Phoenix 4 is paying pro rates. And factor in the the roar of critical approval that met the previous anthologies, there are going to be a lot of people subbing. But, hey, I've always liked a challenge.

Clockwork Phoenix 3 gets the Deb's thumbs up of approval, both a story level and at a craft level. In fact, I'm going to do a few posts looking at techniques in stories from the collection.

Tomorrow is St Valentine's Day, by Tori Truslo is a beautiful and strange retelling of The Little Mermaid set on the moon. Truslo creates  false documents to tell the story: diary entries, letters, poems, academic papers. I actually dislike the term false, as the documents are real in terms of the story, but I can think of a better one. Truslo also quotes and riff's off a real-life document, an extract from Hamlet.

False documents are often used to head section in a short story, The Zepplin Conductors' Society Annual Gentleman's Ball, by Genevieve  Valentine is a lovely example.

Wiki's entry on false documents say that they create an illusion of truth for the reader. I really can't agree with that. What I think they do is offer the author a clever way of introducing other point of views within the narrative, and expanding the world building at a relatively small cost of words. Something's that's important to the short story writer. There's a distancing effect also, I think in telling the story in this way. It's a very interesting technique. I must ponder more upon it.

I haven't used this technique in any of my stories yet. But I want to. What about you? Have you used false documents in your stories?  Do you like the technique?



A writer update for the Healthy Writers Club, hosted by Shallee McArthur  Sign up here. Wow. I'm loving it. What is it about writing things down on my blog that makes me feel obliged to do it.

I have certainly done more exercise this week because of the club, sneaking in extra walks, a swim and a bike ride. Although I must admit It went a bit pear-shaped at the weekend, but onwards.

So much so, that I'm inspired to increase my daily walk target to 1500 steps or 12km. Trying to do a bike ride and a swim and my ten a day fuit and veg challenge. Bring it on.