First Lines: Unravelling

Very pleased to say my flash fiction, "Unravelling," has been published in the latest issue of PULP Lit Magazine. It's only 600 words, so take a second to read it over a sip of coffee:

As I like to do when I'm lucky enough to get one of these crazy works in print, here's a compare and contrast of what the first line of the story looked like in the initial draft versus the published version (I believe I have a written draft somewhere that predates the one below, but it's probably close enough that I'm not going to bother digging through mountains of old notebooks).

Unravelling First Draft, Dated 31 March 2024:

Darren is just finishing his shower when he picks a small curl of lint from his shoulder. He thinks nothing of it until much, much later.

This flash answered a question I'd had, which was, "What would it be like if a man physically unravelled? Why? What would happen?" I knew we'd probably veer into body horror, so I set out to start from an image both simple and foreboding. In a story titled 'Unravelling,' that this guy has a small curl of lint on his body certainly is a point not to be glossed over, right? And the fact that he thinks nothing of it until "much, much later" practically blasts Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor in your head.

What this opening didn't do was any of the sort of journalistic work that needs to head a story. Especially in a piece of flash, the writer needs to give as much of the "who what where when" as quickly as possible. The line also felt weak to me; it didn't do any work to plant the stout stake of emotion around which every story must (pun fully intended) unravel. After putting this one down for awhile and receiving a handful of polite but hasty "no thank you's," I came back and decided we needed a little more. 

Unravelling Publication Draft, Dated 09 Feb 2025:

Darren first notices lint as he scalds the last of Sophia from his skin. He plucks a tangle from his breast, watches it circle the shower drain, and thinks nothing of it until much, much later.

This version wins because it answers a few of those journalistic questions while also setting up where the story is ultimately headed. There is a Sophia in addition to a Darren. The reader is cued into the fact Darren feels the need to "scald" Sophia from his skin. There is still the rumbling bass of eeriness to come, but also we see Darren disconnected from his own body, his own life. We see him watch a small piece of himself thoughtlessly circle the drain.

It's the sort of opening that gives me, as a writer, the license and confidence to get as weird as the story needs. Usually drafts become better on the road publication through subtraction, rather than addition. But, at least in this specific case, not always.