Andrea Caswell
A CRAFT CHAT WITH MAXIEJANE FRAZIER

In her story “We Laugh” (Issue 46), MaxieJane Frazier conveys a lifetime’s worth of emotion and transformation in fewer than 300 words. In this Craft Chat with senior fiction editor Andrea Caswell, Frazier shares her favorite aspects of writing flash, and how the use of repetition helped her structure this gripping piece.  

“Structure feels as if it’s everything in flash—although everything feels as if it’s everything in flash.”

Andrea Caswell: In “We Laugh,” you repeat the structure of the first sentence in each successive paragraph, moving through large chunks of time so effectively. Did that structure develop organically, or was this in response to a prompt with those parameters? Thanks for sharing how the piece initially developed.

MaxieJane Frazier: Structure feels as if it’s everything in flash—although everything feels as if it’s everything in flash. When we write in such a minimalist form, we’re being brave and experimental and asking readers to bring their contingent reality into conversation with our words. Structure functions a bit like signposts suggesting possible paths for readers. Moving through those decades in “We Laugh,” I wanted the repetition to emphasize some of the other verbs: laugh, dash, wait, cut, meet, arrange, write, and especially, laugh again. That allowed the repetition to move beyond structure to the content. The repeated structure is something I’ve admired in Sarah Freligh’s work. I remember being inspired by the way she tells such unflinching stories about girls and women. Hers is a voice that inevitably influences my own, and her workshops are where my flash writing has seen the most growth. 

I wrote this piece in a Nancy Stohlman class, “Finding the Muse.” She encouraged me to use the decades, which broke the piece open. The exact prompt escapes me, though I know we were encouraged to think about point of view. If I had to reverse engineer the prompt, I’d say the task was to find out what I’d learn by breaking out of a singular first person voice and speaking as an assembly of people, a POV made up of a cohesive group of voices, such as in Caroline Zancan’s We Wish You Luck or Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides.

Andrea: Tell us about using the pronoun “we” throughout. What did it help you accomplish?

MaxieJane: My hope was that “we” would allow all women reading this piece to be a part of the narrative. In my memoir I’m writing about my twenty-six-year military career,  and have been focused on feeling like an imposter on so many levels, especially as a woman in a man’s world. Using the pronoun “we” in this piece helped me wrestle with the cultural and social implications of femininity, feminism, and how women bonding and lifting each other up brings women into community and power. I realize this lofty idea might feel like too much to place on a 300-word piece full of pop culture and Thai green curry, but I don’t think so. Flash allows this narrative moment to be courageous, honest, and to make bold declarations. Women, especially when we’re girls, infamously cut each other down. But look at what we are when we find joy together. Think of what we could be. And, just possibly, what the world could be in that kind of paradigm shift. 

Andrea: At first I thought “we” was comprised of two people, such as BFFs or sisters. As the piece progressed, who “we” were seemed to expand, and I realized maybe it didn’t matter exactly how many people were part of it. Could you elaborate on who “we” might be?

MaxieJane: I love that you read the “we” as a smaller group of women to begin with. That play, the ability to bring in different possibilities, is my favorite part of reading and writing flash. I want someone to remember going to a bar, hoping to find something that could never be in a place like that. Yet, in the search, they learn to be bold in their bodies and exercise some of that power. I’m working with amazing women veterans who are writing for a book intended for publication in 2026 about 50 years of women at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Based on my interactions with friends and women like these, I’m learning that our real-life experiences can also become more limited than the dreams of our youth. In our highly specific and unique ways, every person faces disappointments and a reality that feels as if promises we believed in have been broken. When we’re older, things become more difficult even as the stakes in our lives seem to grow bigger. I’m focused on women, but hopefully there is a parallel men’s story that envisions something better. This piece is trying to take on what it means to let go of sociocultural expectations for women—written from an American perspective, but possibly offering a universal trajectory to an end where we only care about what matters to us. 

Andrea: Flash requires such exacting precision. What do you enjoy about writing in this form? 

MaxieJane: Everything! Flash, for me, is like prose poetry that requires a narrative arc and a loose obligation to make sense. But what’s best about this form is its ability to hold up under the weight of the world. A writing tip by Ralph Pennel on Vancouver Flash Fiction basically asked how much a story can withstand before it collapses. He tells us to never settle for less. And while it’s the ambiguity of flash, its ability to take up rent in a reader’s mind and expand beyond what’s on the page, that I love the most, I can’t help but have a deep affection for the way flash requires writers to understand and manipulate the most basic fundamentals of fiction. The magic and mystery that characterize this form are the result of a strong foundation in the essentials of craft.

Andrea: What problems or challenges did you encounter in revision? How did you resolve them?

MaxieJane: My biggest challenge is always that oily voice whose sibilant whisper says, “It’s good enough.” I become afraid of changing too much, of losing my vision for the piece, and that it will become immutably something different. In a practical sense, I save versions—though that can open its own can of worms. 

Another exercise I regularly employ in micro-writing is to change the point of view, shake up the chronology, and even write from a different character entirely. I usually go back to some version of the original form, but I know more when I do. From my heart, I just ask myself to be brave and embrace change. The best results come when I “blow up” what I start with and discover how the pieces fit back together. Hopefully a little like a form of Kintsugi where the shards could also be rearranged, the final version is a little more beautiful for having been detonated.