I should begin by clarifying what I mean by “metaphor.” I do not mean abstract symbolism that you force the reader to dig through, so that he can make-believe he understands what the story’s about, while looking down his nose at the Philistines in the audience.

What I’m talking about is “show; don’t tell” metaphors. These happen in every effective story, whether we consciously realize it or not. They are part of what makes the difference between a story that is just a series of meaningless events and a story that is about something.

The human mind is a metaphorical machine. It associates events, objects, people with our perceptions of them. In a sense, everything’s a metaphor, because our perceptions—not raw facts—determine how we react. And these metaphors, these perceptions, are more important even than the reality behind them.

PJ Kaiser suggested—probably because I’ve been doing weekly "#FridayFlash Favorites" posts—that I write about what catches my attention in a flash story, and what turns me off.

I thought that was a pretty kewl idea, and I further decided to link to last week’s #FridayFlash stories (because they’re still fresh in my mind) in order to demonstrate each point. As it turns out, this post has grown long enough to span over two days. So I’ll go through the first 3 turn-ons (and 5 turn-offs) today, and finish up tomorrow.

(Maybe I’ll post another follow up next week, the short version, just a checklist without the explanation. That’ll be far fewer words, but you’ll probably need to read the long version to understand what I’m talking about.)

Having sifted through about 100 stories a week since I started these posts, I’m probably qualified at least to venture an opinion. On top of that, I (usually) know what I like, and (usually) know how to write what I like—which also comes with experience—so I know why I like it.

Even so, my opinions are just that: opinions. The more experience I gain as a writer and author, the more I realize that there’s no right or wrong when it comes to creative expression. (Us indie authors, that’s our rightful motto, you know.) There’s only what you like (or dislike) and what you like (or dislike) about it. So as you go down the following list of positives and negatives—especially if I linked to your story to exemplify one of the negatives—if you think I’m full of BS… well, you’re probably right.

In general, I look for pretty much the same in flash as I look for in any story. The only difference between flash and longer stories is that flash fiction is, uh, shorter. Therefore, the best flash stories respect the length and use it to effect. Other than that, I admire the same qualities in flash that excite me about short stories, novellas, novels, movies, TV episodes, graphic novels, …

I love character stories. In fact, I rarely enjoy a story unless it has a character-driven component.

So I was naturally surprised that I so enjoyed Al Bruno’s latest #FridayFlash story. It’s not really a character story, per se. Or is it?

I actually have a different take on that now, different than last week. I think it is a character story, but not in the traditional sense.

Entitled “Breaking the Girl,” here’s the story’s basic outline—