For me, “Paper Planes” can stand as an exemplary microfiction. Effective. And even moving.
That single paragraph embodies many of the traits attributed to the genre: extreme brevity, condensation, suggestion, implicit information, immersion, a carefully managed atmosphere and placement at specific moments, and an ending — the twist of the ending — that forces the reader to reinterpret what has come before. To enlarge what has happened and what may come. Because the narrator, measured in tone, does not fully explain the situation nor, of course, the feelings of the protagonist. It sticks to stating the essentials. Essential are the parking lot, the flowerbeds or gardens, the gift, the friends… The play. What it represents, in addition to the desire to travel freely, to escape to other places. To go out. As the alibi of the imagination to escape wherever. Also, the desire. It isn’t specified either, and it should be you and I who formulate or guess it. Guessing it doesn’t seem easy, though desire knows how to cross the air on its own. And it even sketches a character who — like no place or no one in this very subtle piece — has no name.
In fact, it’s not surprising that “Paper Planes” was awarded in 2019 at the Zoes Association Microfiction Contest.
The story it tells does not precisely hinge on a contrast or a mismatch between an initial situation presented in the opening words and a closing moment to which the narration leads. More than a before and after there is a front and a back. And you may have noticed that each action — each sentence — adds information and guides the reader toward the final discovery.
Raúl Clavero —Raúl Clavero Blázquez— began, in the late months of 2011, to participate in short-story and microfiction competitions. He has won many. Dozens and dozens and dozens. The international short-story prize at the Semana Negra festival in Gijón, the Ciudad de Marbella, the Joaquín Lobato, the Villa de Montánchez, the Camilo José Cela prize from Padrón, the Ciudad de Elda, the Unicaja short-story prize, the José Calderón Escalada prize of Reinosa, the Vinartfest microfiction 2021, and many more. He has lived in Madrid for more than twenty years. He was born in 1978 in Salamanca, where he studied Hispanic Philology and completed a master’s in screenwriting for television and cinema. To date he has worked primarily for television and radio production companies. As a screenwriter and writer. He has also won screenwriting awards, such as the Rovira-Beleta Prize, named after the director of the feature Los Tarantos.
*****
Paper Planes
On the nose of the plane, the girl writes the names of distant countries. She learned many of them with that glowing globe her uncle gave her. Then, on the wings, she draws her friends from school. When the paper plane is full, she opens the window and throws it with all her might. Most of them fall onto the flowers, or into the ambulance parking lot, but some begin to fly, and they drift away, drift away. Then she makes a wish, and runs back to bed before any nurse discovers her.■
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Award in the Zoes Association microfiction contest, 2019.