Winner

First of all, congratulations to all who entered the Flash Fiction contest. Every one of you did an excellent job. There were entries that made me think, entries that tugged at my heart, and entries that were truly unique and inspiring. Every single one had a different take on what their "door" was. Sometimes it was metaphorical (with some breathtaking metaphors, let me tell you), sometimes it brought on memories. Sometimes it was a setting or even a portal.

Fantastic. Truly. It's killing me because I wish I could pick more than one. (There might just be more than one winner too. Some of the other Typelings have asked to read through the entries.) So if you didn't win this one, don't count yourself out yet.

In fact, don't count yourself out at all. Because you're fabulous!

Without further ado, the winner:

P.M. Kester!

"Burning Blue"

 She stood outside of the blue door contemplating her next move.

 Answers were on the other side of the door.  She would finally know who she was and where she had come from.  On the other hand, it could result in her death.  She was raised not to ask questions and to keep her expectations low.  But she kept hearing that voice.  The voice kept nagging her and making her recall things she probably shouldn’t.

 She placed her hand on the handle of the blue door and then immediately snatched it back. It felt hot! Why was the handle hot!

Dressed in a black zip front hoodie and matching all black attire, she took her jacket off and used it to slowly turn the knob.  Upon pushing the door open, there was an explosion.  Dazed and on her butt in the middle of the street, she made of the sound of footsteps coming from several directions.

“The clinic is on fire, get help!” someone shouted.

“Someone has been hurt,” another voice said.  Laying flat on her back, she could hear footsteps moving toward her as she struggled to open her eyes.

"Are you okay," she felt someone whisper near her ear.  She took a deep breath and opened her eyes slowly recognizing the voice.

"What happened to the building," she whispered.

"The building is on fire," the strong male voice whispered.  "The volunteers are putting it out now.  Were you able to get in and pull your file?"

"No, the building exploded right as I opened the door," she said as tears began to stream down her face.  "Now I will never know who I am or why I have this face."

He kissed her forehead and gingerly lifted her into a sitting position.  They sat in the middle of the street watching the volunteers put out the fire and listening to snatches of conversation.

"Who would want to hurt Dr. Eagle," one lady said.

"Maybe he wasn't in the building" a man replied.

"He was always in the building" an older woman replied.  "I guarantee he will be among the things recovered when we're done."

They got to their feet and wandered over to the smoldering ruins of the building.  She helped the ladies fill buckets of water and he helped the men extinguish the flames. Keeping busy helped her not concentrate on her failure.  Every 28 days she woke up with a new face but unbeknownst to the world she still maintained her old memories.  She wanted to know why but the answers were now in the ashes.

As she hugged some of the volunteers and prepared to go home, she saw something gleaming in the moonlight.  Gingerly, she made her way to the spot trying to ensure she was not seen. Using her jacket, she hastily picked up the object and wrapped it in the black fabric.

Maybe she would find answers after all.

Well done, Phalia!

The reason I chose this one was because I wanted to know why. Why did she have a different face? What was her history? What was her future? 

Wait for my email and send me a first chapter for your critique. You've earned it!

Cheers,

Hero

P.S. I'm sure you're all wondering...
The photo of the blue door was taken at Gloucester, Gloucestershire, England. Near the Gloucester Cathedral where several scenes from the Harry Potter movies were filmed. 
Ah, England.

Behind the door Flash Fiction Contest

When I was in England I obsessed over doors. They were so cool lookin'. Small doors, gigantic doors, blue doors, red doors, doors that led to nowhere, doors that led to hallways, cloisters, and courtyards...
Doors.

So here's what I want you to do:

Create a short story or story excerpt from this picture. Where is this? Where does it lead? What's on the other side? What's on this side?

It can be any genre except dystopian. I'm so over dystopian.

Okay, I'm just kidding, it can be whatever you want it to be. In all seriousness though, I don't like reading stories with a whole lot of muck in it. i.e. totally unnecessary swear words or graphic sexuality. Call me old fashioned if you want but I'm in charge. So there.

Max is 500 words.
Submit your entry to chapterhouselane@mail.com by Friday, January 11th at midnight MST. Make sure to give me your name and email address so we can contact you if you win.
Winners will be announced on Monday, January 14th.

Prize for the winner? Your story will be featured on the Typelings blog, along with our praise and adoration for your talent. You'll also get a first-chapter critique for your current WiP. Maybe even the first five chapters if I REALLY like your entry.
...and I'll tell you where this photo was taken. What more could any of you possibly wish for?

There may be more than one winner if my fellow Typelings are so inclined to pick their favorite and offer a critique as well.

Best of luck.

Cheers,
Hero

Scenes and chapters = not same.

Photo © 2010 Annaliese Moyer.

A scene and a chapter are not the same thing.

I am not genius enough to have learned this on my own.  Instead, I learned this from author Mary Robinette Kowal who appears on Writing Excuses, a weekly podcast about the craft of fiction writing.

Here's the difference between the two: a scene is an element of story structure and is a complete arc of some kind (whether milieu  idea, character or event); a chapter is an element of pacing structure.  Ignorance of this difference leads to inadvertent mapping of the pacing structure (chapters) onto the story structure (scenes).

Translation?  Readers get bored, so break up long scenes.

It may seem like a gimmick to end a chapter when a character pulls out a gun, conjures a monster, or is nabbed by a human-eating robot, but it keeps the reader turning pages.

Well-thought out chapter breaks have the same effect as adrenaline on the body: heart rate increases, and the reader decides to fight through the suspense, or throw the book at their nearest sibling/friend/cat before picking it up again.

Ok, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the point.

Let me say here that chapter breaks are not, or should not be, arbitrary.  They are calculated to propel the reader through the content of the book.  Scenes, however, serve an entirely different function: they make promises and fulfill them; what those promises are, and what fulfillment looks like depends entirely on what kind of a scene it is.

Orson Scott Card suggests in his book, Characters and Viewpoint, that there are four different kinds of stories (or scenes): milieu (i.e. setting), idea, character or event.  Each kind of story will have a particular beginning and ending (or promise and fulfillment).

Milieu stories start with a character entering a particular setting and end with them leaving it.  They can be the opposite as well: leaving a familiar place to return to it later; either way the story focuses on an exploration of the setting.  The Lord of the Rings is, arguably, the greatest milieu story ever written (the books NOT the movies--the movies are also brilliant, but the screenplay shifted the story from its main focus on milieu to the characters/events).  We start in the Shire, explore Bree, Tom Bombadil's place, the Wight Barrows, Weathertop, Moria (and I'm not even past the first book :p ), etc. and eventually wind up in the Shire again.

Idea stories start with a mystery, or question, and end when the mystery is solved, or the answer is obtained.  Detective novels are the archetypal idea stories.  Someone's dead and who's done it?  The story is complete when we learn the perpetrator's identity.

Character stories are my personal favorite.  They focus on (surprise) a character whose lot in life causes them to seek change.  The story ends when they either find a new lot in life, or are reconciled to their original lot.  The movie A Knight's Tale (cheesy, yes) is one of my favorites because of the message that you can change your stars.  That thought still inspires me.

Finally, event stories are your prototypical action/adventure stories.  The end of the world is about to happen/is happening and the story ends with everyone dead or the world saved from destruction.  Or universe.  Or school.  Whatever--the scope of threat isn't as important as the engagement with it.  Or really, resolving the EVENT, whether its alien invasion or Voldemort returning.  So yes, Harry Potter is, among other things, a great event story. 

Now, these aren't the only kind of stories.  Notice, there's no love story listed.  No _____ (you fill in the blank).  I think Card was attempting to be as generally specific as possible (yea, that doesn't make sense to me either).  Love stories could be a character story, or they could be an event story.  If you focus more on all the details of the wedding itself, and the conflict comes because, oh no, the flowers don't show up on time, you're dealing with an event story.  But if, instead, the focus is on the psychological impact of your pending marriage to a guy who is ten years older, divorced, and already has three kids, then you're probably dealing with a character story.  You could even make it an idea/milieu story if the main character is getting an arranged marriage and spends the whole novel trying to figure out the identity of their betrothed while hating on their restrictive, alien-to-us society.

I digress.

My point in all the explanation is this: the fundamentals of broader story structure apply to more narrow scene structure.  Most (if not all) novels are not uniquely character or idea novels.  You can have a character/milieu-driven idea novel like Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep.  It's a hardboiled detective novel that ends when the crime is solved, but is made interesting because of the evocation of 1940's ish Southern California and the iconic private eye Philip Marlowe (if you haven't read Chandler, do yourself the favor--you'll swear it sounds familiar because Chandler was so widely imitated).  You get the combination of story types by having character scenes, or milieu scenes, etc. along the journey of solving the crime.  In fact, novels differ from short stories primarily because a short story accomplishes one thing (idea, event, etc.) while a novel tackles more than one.

More digression.

Just remember this: scenes advance the story towards it's conclusion; chapters propel the reader from scene to scene.

And that's my latest tip.