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ADVICE

Writing Flash Fiction by G.W.Thomas. 7 points for success. [01] The small idea to build on. [02]
Bury the preamble in the opening. [03] Start in the middle of the action. [04] Focus on one powerful image. [05] Make the reader guess until the end. [06] Use allusive references -- but not too obscure. [07] Use a twist.

Writing Flash Fiction Using Bubble Diagrams. A technique to get you going.

Flash What? A Quick Look at Flash Fiction by Jason Gurley. Advice for self-editing and markets for your work.

Who Wears Short Shorts? Micro Stories and MFA Disgust. A critique. Is the short-short just a device for MFA students to "get published"? Do people who love a good story read these things?

INSPIRATION

Brevity. A journal of concise literary nonfiction (with good articles on craft)

Six-Word Fiction. Very short stories, inspired by Hemingway. Wired No. 14.11

300 Words. Award-winning series of short essays by Brady Dennis, St Peterburg Times. They highlight "ordinary" people with a story to tell. Lessons: [01] Capture a moment. [02] Find a universal theme: love, loss, death, change, new beginnings — something everyone can relate to. Not just "an interesting person." [03] Make sure audience knows why story is important and worth their time. [04] Rely on observation, not quotes. Don't interview; watch and listen. [05] Cut out the fat. Less is more.

400 Words. Short-short memoir for a busy world.

Share Yours

Pen 10. A Ning Social Network created by Olive Rosehips, specializing in writing with 10 sentences or less.

Six Sentences. Another social network

Smith Magazine. Home of the 6-word memoir.

What Is It, Really?

Flash fiction is a very short form of story-telling -- maybe only 75 words, maybe up to a couple hundred. I've see definitions that go up to 1000. A "drabble" is exactly 100 words. While the definitions take themselves seriously, I'm having a hard time distinguishing between flash fiction and a joke. Guy walks into a bar... A priest, a minister, and a rabbi... punchline. My husband pointed me toward the funny papers: self-contained stories in 4 panels.

Hasn't Reader's Digest been publishing "short-shorts" in the form of reader-contributed anecdotes for decades? Isn't that sort of what all those Chicken Soup books are about?

I have a book on "sudden fiction." The shorties seem more like little meditations on an emotional state -- not stories, where you start out at one place and end up at another. They present beautiful detailed images, but I keep thinking they must only be scenes in a larger story.

Maybe the idea is that you fill in the rest on the power of the short scene. Like Hemingway's famous 6-word story: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." No doubting the power of that one.

3.9.01 (Last updated 6.1.09)