The Father, the Son, and the Not-So-Holy Micro

by Amy Cipolla Barnes

Alberico Bartoccini

I’ve always found writing micro fiction to be as hard as longer flash or short stories. Choosing details to include like dialogue or descriptions becomes a matter of words, not paragraphs or pages. My NFFD NZ Micro Madness shortlist micro is only 100 words but it went through major versions along with self-editing and peer edits. Confession: I have a lot of Google Docs of early versions and incomplete stories. The three versions for this micro follow below with some notes on my editing process. I didn’t realize how much it changed from the initial 200-word version.

I didn’t fully complete the first version because it started feeling too complicated. There was a mother/child relationship, missing father, lasagna, air mattress, Jesus being in the house getting painted, Tiger Beat, too much on the long hair, the alleys, and the name options. I have learned one thing about my 100-word micros — one central idea is enough. One or two characters. One or two names. This version felt cluttered and messy and ended up just petering out with another complicated idea — that Jesus was hot. I even briefly considered having the mother paint Jesus naked and quickly dropped that idea.

The things that rolled forward were: Jesus is getting his portrait done, he has long hair and a certain amount of surreal ambiguity if this is THE Jesus or just someone with the name.

“My Mother’s Impressionist Period” (201 words):

When Jesus comes to visit, my mother gives him an air mattress and feeds him lasagna.

“He slept in a horse trough when he was born,” she tells me.

“How do you know he likes Italian food,” I ask her.

She hovers around him while he sleeps with her good fabric scissors in hand.

“His hair is too long,” she says.

I think he looks like the boys on the front cover of Tiger Beat. Boys that ride motorcycles and drive fast cars. Jesus walked from somewhere. I can tell because he’s wearing dirty Birkenstocks.

The streets around us are named Alley #1 and Alley #2 and Alley #3. Someone gave up naming them anything creative. Jesus’ mother did the same. There are so many other names she could have given him. Joseph, Jr. Harry. God, Jr. Gone the creative route with Trinity, abbreviated as Trin because he grew up in the South and everyone gets a nickname.

Jesus is in our house for my mother to paint his portrait. It’s a major coup for her fledgling business.

“He’ll be great in my portfolio,” she tells me.

I think she’s hot for Jesus but I don’t dare say that to her.

Version 2:

This version is shorter by 50 words. I’ve moved Jesus and his portrait taker into Sears. There is one other person present. There’s long hair. And Final Net. I tried out some pop culture references that felt more modern, America’s Top Model. There’s some basic dialogue. Too many details about the studio and a terrible Cheesus/Jesus joke. There are also a few extraneous words that I dropped here to tighten the prose. The title is finalized here and bears weight leading into the story. Without it, I think the ending line has impact but the two lines tie together

“The Man Who Has His Picture Taken at Sears and Never Comes Back” (151 words):

When Jesus arrives for his session, I offer him Final Net to style his shoulder length hair. No filters he says. I wouldn’t dare, I tell him but he should know better; it is a mall photography studio and there’s pee on the carpeted block I’ll put under his arms before asking him to say Cheesus in a way that makes kids laugh but he might find offensive. I choose the blonde-haired, blue-eyed lens and snap away, giving him instructions like he’s on America’s Top Model. Have you considered modeling? I ask, imagining him riding a horse on the beach or wearing a pirate costume on a romance novel cover. He shakes his head no and reminds me he’s here to pose for work: a simple headshot for Bibles and stock photography. He seems to be in a hurry and buys only the basic package, promising to return in three days.

Version 3, final:

Before I subbed this, I had a writer friend read it too for further clarity. I ended up cutting another 50 words so it ended up fitting the NFFD NZ Micro Madness contest guidelines. Bad Cheesus joke goes. America’s Top Model is also out. Title stays. The blonde-haired, blue-eyed lens bears more weight. I think the ambiguity of “is this real Jesus or just someone with Jesus as their name” still comes through.

One of the things that I cut here is “He seems to be in a hurry” in the last sentence. Those seven words felt like they took away from the sentence’s main point. I asked myself there if my fictional Jesus at Sears would be in a hurry. In my weird mind, he wouldn’t be because he was at a portrait studio.

The narrator has no name throughout each of the three versions. It wasn’t intentional but by the third major version, it became clear that only one name was necessary. By keeping that name as only Jesus, I think that the emphasis is stronger. I asked myself if Jesus should address the narrator by name and it just didn’t make the edits.

Re-reading this, I imagine this narrator telling the next customer or one of their co-workers this story which also feels like it nails down the audience better than the first version. In that version, I’m not sure who the narrator is talking to. In the final version, the narrator could be telling the reader so I *think* this becomes kind of 2nd POV.

I also still see places to further edit this. The tense might be shifting a bit too much. I’m also never quite sure how to use the more non-traditional dialogue tag. In my mind, using italics instead of more conversational dialogue had two functions: brevity and to imply again that this is imaginary.

What I do like: the narrator and Jesus have also had some previous conversation about what he wants: the Bible headshot and stock photographs, without having to portray that interaction with more words. The tiny addition of italics to the “it is a mall photography studio” reduces the description down to just those three words because of the italic emphasis.

And there you have it, the things I go through to write 100 words, in 1213 words.

“The Man Who Has His Picture Taken at Sears and Never Comes Back” (100 words)

When Jesus arrives, I offer him Final Net to style his shoulder length hair. No filters he says. I wouldn’t dare, I tell him but he should know better; it is a mall photography studio. I chose the blonde-haired, blue-eyed lens. Have you considered modeling? I ask, imagining him riding a horse on the beach or wearing a pirate costume on a romance novel cover. He shakes his head no and reminds me he’s here for work: a simple headshot for Bibles and stock photography. He buys only the basic package, promising to return in three days.