Flash Fiction #175
A: “It says here ‘nothing is too silly, too stupid, too weird to be included.’ Now the first exercise is: tell me something absurd.”
B: “I don’t have it right now.”
A: “But you told me your parents were absurd the other day.”
B: “I did, but … I said it in context. Now when you ask a question like this out of context, I don’t have a ready answer. My brain cells can’t work this way.”
A: “Well, you didn’t bring your brain with you today, did you? Just tell me something. A little absurdity is fine. It doesn’t have to be terribly absurd.”
B: “I’ve already told you I don’t have it. I really don’t.”
A: “Use your imagination. Dig up some memories. An old friend, a relative, a holiday dinner conversation. Just give me something.”
B: “… I have…nothing… I don’t feel like it. My imagination doesn’t work on command. It comes and goes to please itself, not to please me. The more I order my mind to do something, the more it defies the order.”
A: “We are wasting our time here, aren’t we? Don’t feel like it. What an excuse!”
B “I don’t understand why we always have to learn things out of context. An hour of lifeless extractions of literature, an hour of simplified theories on math, an hour of repetition in a language. We use ourselves as robots as if we can just jump from one subject to another, switch our brain on and off, open or shut our imagination at will. And of course the most out-of-context of all is language learning, with disjointed sentences out of the thin air, on topics we have no interest in.”
A: “Stop whining. Get down to work.”
B: “Oh, wait, I see. I think I have come up with something absurd to tell you.”
A: “What is it?”
B: “I think your expectation is absurd. Our whole conversation is absurd.”
Recently I started to look into what had bothered me for a long time—how to write better. In order to do that, I think I am going to learn various techniques by targeted practices. And one of the things that I am really bad at is writing a dialog. And the advice I received from online posts and books is—you probably already guessed it—writing more bad dialogs. The theory is after we torture ourselves with enough bad dialogs, our skills will improve and our dialogs will come out witty, concise, insightful. It is likely that the theory is just an illusion. There is a saying that practice makes perfect. However looking behind the phrase “practice makes perfect”, we can see the other side of this encouraging proverb, which is for some people, practice makes perfect, but for others, practice makes no improvement and produces disappointment and anxiety.
I shouldn’t be a pessimist even though this summer is hotter than ever, the world is more chaotic, our quiet life seems to teeter on the brink of inquietude.
A beautifully feathered bird named “hope” will sing a sweet tune and keep us happy no matter what.
Haoyan Do 
Love this ending! Such a real-life situations where some people are insisting and others are resisting
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Don’t worry, you’re getting to where you need to be!
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Dialogues can be hard but you’re already pretty good. I enjoyed this
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This may seem simplistic (!) but I guess it’s a good idea to read dialogue (or anything) out loud. I find if I do that I notice defects that I’m unaware of when I just read it in my head (so to speak).
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I just heard the same advice on an audiobook on writing. I’ve never read aloud my own writing before, for fear that it sounds even worse when the real sounds come out. However, you are right that we should try to do it in various ways to see which one can help.
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Thanks for sharing your insights about writing.
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Thank you for visiting.
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It’s awesome that you are trying to better your writing. From my experience, when it comes to writing, practice really does make perfect.
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Yes, let’s wish all the practice helps us improve and get rid of the feeling of dissatisfaction.
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