journalists and bloggers, and indeed anyone who seeks to tighten up their writing in any form, eliminating superfluous words and cutting to the chase. I believe that writing flash fiction is a very useful exercise for authors who want to practice expressing themselves within a limited word count e.g. It takes real skill and effort to fit a great story into such a small framework. Why Write Flash Fiction?ĭon't be fooled by the brevity of this art-form. In my own new collection, Quick Change, I've placed the stories in ascending order according to the age of the key players, literally from cradle to grave. Personally I prefer flash collections in which the tiny stories are unified by a common theme, whether in structure – as in Helena Mallet's Flash Fraction, comprising 75 stories each of 75 words, or Calum Kerr's Lunch Hour, which riffs on the possibilities of what might happen in that brief midday time frame. Much dazzlingly creative experimental flash is emerging just now. It also allows for experimentation, which is easier with a short form than with a novel-length work. If you pick up a good flash collection or anthology, it can have the same effect as opening a packet of sweets: you snack on one or two, and before you realise it you've consumed the whole lot at one sitting.ĭespite the constraints of its low word count, flash fiction can accommodate satisfyingly traditional story-telling and, if desired, a sneaky twist.
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So why the renewed interest in flash fiction now? It's an ideal form for the digital age, in which more people are reading on smaller electronic screens, and in which wide access to the internet makes it easy to download and read short fiction in odd moments on the move.Ĭynics might also say it's the ideal length to grab the supposed short attention span of modern youth, but I think that's unfair. Read flash on your phone, wherever you go Why Now is a Good Time to Write Flash Fiction
Ironically one could write lengthy essays explicating such short stories.
Just enough is revealed to engage the reader's imagination and get him or her effectively collaborating with the author to fill in the back-story and the detail. Part of the intrigue of flash fiction is what it doesn't say. Ernest Hemingway, not known for his verbosity, once wrote a classic six-worder which is often quoted as the perfect example of such economic writing: Quick as a Flash to Readįlash fiction is not new: people have long been writing stories of this kind and calling it various other names, such as micro-fiction, ultra-short stories and sudden fiction. Quick as a flash – and just as illuminatingĪs someone who has spent most her career writing relatively brief items, from journalism to press releases and brochures, and as an ardent blogger (323 posts on my author blog at last count), I veer naturally towards short-form fiction when it comes to creative writing.Īlthough I read a vast quantity of novels, I prefer to write short stories, and until recently I was fixated on the classic word count of 3,000 per story.īut then I discovered flash fiction, thanks to a chance encounter on social media with National Flash Fiction Day, founded two years ago by British university lecturer and author Calum Kerr, and I quickly came to embrace what seemed at first glance an impossibly restrictive format: typically anything from 75 to 1,000 words, and sometimes even shorter.
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