FlashFiction.Net

The question I'm most asked is, "What is flash fiction?" It is often, according to Google Insights for Search, one of the top searches associated with flash. (continue reading)

In a recent blog entry at Three Guys One Book, Jason Chambers, Jason Rice, Dennis Haritou, and Jonathan Evison, inspired by a NYT article on 100 tips for restaurant service, began their own list of dont's for writers. Haritou begins with this introduction to his list of ten. (continue reading)

Sherrie Flick’s I Call This Flirting, a 46-page chapbook of flash fiction , is an intimate collection detailing grief, abandonment, memory, love, and longing. She chose to construct her stories in predominately very close first person, often the “I” speaking directly to “you” the reader. This close perspective will pull you into the fictional worlds Flick has created, and it speaks to the book's title. And while I enjoyed many of the stories in this collection, it is the intimate voice found in Flick’s writing that I found most appealing. (continue reading)

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Of course, this is all my opinion, so I am going to dispense with those qualifying words IMHO. An opinion is an opinion. It is neither humble nor is it wrong (though it can be misguided; I pray mine is not). I am writing this from the top of my bald head, so forgive sentence structure and any clarification problems.

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If flash were nothing more than a shortened short story, then there would have been zero reason to christen a literary genre called flash. There is already short story (2000-7000/8000 words) and short short story (1000-2000 words). To have a short short short and relabeling it flash is absurd.

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The compression of language does something that changes the writing paradigm between short story and flash. Just the mere reduction in the word count tells me that it is "impossible" to have a short story, necessarily partitioned with a beginning, middle and end, a main character, a plot, a conflict and its resolution, not to mention the setting and multiple characters development.

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In short story, the words will have to be transparent to achieve all this without bogging the reader down. There is a balance between character-driven and plot-driven stories. That balance requires words so that the reader flows along without having to do too many mental gymnastics or to get defocused with excessive character description and character study. Pretty much (but not completely) the story is laid out and the ending is satisfying (from a reader point of view).

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Flash fiction does have word count limits, just like any other short fiction form. There is virtually unanimous acceptance of the 1000-word upper limit (though some zines will administratively limit the count to 500 words (I think deliberately to minimize short story attempts in disguise or for space considerations, too). I saw a quality ezine (forgot its name at the moment) that actually rewards its contributors by the shorter-is-better standard. They'd pay twice as much for a 300-word flash than for a 700 to 1000-word flash. The lower limit is a little more flexible (undetermined) but seems to be in the 250-300 word range, though I've seen it down to 100 words (clearly well into the microfiction range). The boundaries are blurred and that's okay.

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I said earlier that I believe there is a paradigm shift in flash fiction writing in contradistinction to short story. The tighter language will necessarily bring more focus to the words (compare with poetry where the weight of words usually reaches a maximum). And what is not said becomes increasingly important. The flash fiction piece approaches poetic writing in that the language is distilled and requires more of the reader to extract the nuances the author designs into the piece. (In fact, one way certain kinds of flash fiction can be thought of—the kind that I would normally write—as a prose poem with dialog and other prosy elements in it. But I have also written flash fiction that is 90% dialog and not poetic at all).

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I've delayed "defining" flash fiction until now because I think there is a big difference between flash and short story (and wanted to show some of these differences) even though flash may approach short story, it must necessarily rely on the stuff in between the lines. Regardless, flash can and usually does bring something than a story. Like the name suggests, flash fiction focuses on a flash moment or a slice of life. It is not that something that is read in a flash (of time) simply because it is shorter, though this might be true too. But that is artificial, most flashes often beg to be read again (immediately) because of a "sharp ending"... I'm looking for a different word here, can't find it; not clever or cerebral, but certainly not a typical story ending. It might have to do with the intensity, I don't know. (We encounter something similar in poetry; we reread to see the layered meanings that become apparent by the end of the poem. But I don't want to dwell on this because I don't want to give the impression that flash is typically like poetry, because it is not... but can be--one of the beauties of this form for me.)

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In flash, there will be no word-room for it to do all the things a short story does (and does well—I have come to appreciate the short story and think very highly of it in case I might have given a different impression). So, the wisdom is to have fewer characters (one or two is typical), it still has to have setting, but plot, conflict and its resolution, are not necessary ingredients. However, that doesn't mean they must be absent. For example, Vestal Review, a highly respected journal imposes a 500-word limit on flashes and they must have a plot! So it is possible to have some more of the short story elements than initially suggested, but I'll bet a more attentive (as opposed to casual) reader is required. (I might stand corrected here, but it wouldn't vitiate anything I have voiced.)

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When I was introduced to the term a little over a year ago, I eyed it suspiciously with a jaundiced eye, but have since then seen the exquisite beauty of this form. It deserves more respect than that of a bastardized form of short story.

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I would highly recommend consulting with people who really know what flash fiction is and be able to defend it better than I have attempted. I would believe [them] over the other "camp" who say that "flash is all about word count: it's a story, just like a short story, only shorter." Now I'm getting mad again. I better stop.

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I haven’t arrived for myself at any very satisfactory formulation of what a prose poem is. Certainly it has something to do with condensation…I don’t know how to define it in terms of genre, and when I was working, I guess I just stopped trying to think about that. What I did think about was what the conventions of the prose poem were. At the time that I was starting to write them, the prose poem, as it had been revived in America, was used almost entirely for a kind of wacky surrealist work, and I think that nervousness about using prose was that then you had to put a lot of what people thought was poetic—that is to say, wildness and imagination and free association—into it to make sure that it was poetry, because if it got too near the conventions and sentence sounds of expository prose or narrative prose…then it really wasn’t poetry. So almost as soon as I started working, I got interested in those boundaries: what the prose poem wasn’t supposed to sound like…

It almost seemed like photography to me, and it gave me a feeling that I wanted to experiment with the form…I wrote a whole lot of them, and I got interested in textures, the way that you would with a given palette…I felt excited because I knew it [a particular prose poem, "Churchyard"] was exactly what the prose poem wasn’t supposed to be. It was too much like the sound of expository prose…

Later, something else occurred to me: I was working in these forms because they had a certain outwardness that verse didn’t have. I think I was at a time…when things were going on in my life that I didn’t want to look at, didn’t want to feel. And I wanted to keep writing, so I unconsciously started writing prose to avoid the stricter demands of incantation. When I was doing it, it seemed to be exploratory; in retrospect, it seems a sort of long escape…

…the whole time I was working on the prose poem I knew that somehow I never particularly loved the idea of the prose poem. But it was interesting to me to think about a larger form that might mix verse and prose…

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Hass adds to these thoughts later, in a Poets Q&A. A reader asks, "I am interested in knowing what drew you to the prose poem form in Human Wishes. Also, do you think that the experience of writing those poems influenced the poems in Sun Under Wood formally, and perhaps thematically as well? If so, how?" Hass answers as such:

I talked about this at some length in an interview that was printed some years ago in the Iowa Review, if you want a fuller account, Paul. As I recall, I was writing the peice that became "Museum" in Human Wishes and I couldn't find in the rhythms of the verse a way to describe the reciprocity between the young couple I was trying to describe. So I turned aside to write it out in prose to clarify for myself what I was seeing. And once I felt like I'd gotten it in prose, there didn't seem to be a reason for trying to translate it back into verse. I had been working on some of the essays in Twentieth Century Pleasures around this time, and I found that writing them I would sometimes labor over the shaping of particular paragraphs in the way that I work on poems. So the two impulses seemed to fuse for me at the moment, and I became interested in the idea of the paragraph as a form. A phrase came into my head--the name of a posthumous book of essays by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "The Prose of the World"--and that gave me a push also. Later, looking back on those pieces, I came to think that I had begun writing in prose to avoid the deeper engagement with what I was feeling that verse would have required. Prose seemed a cooler medium. And in Sun Under Wood, particularly in "My Mother's Nipples," it's true that the things we can say in verse and the things we can say in prose became a theme.

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Yesterday, I came across Laura Ellen Scott's VIPs on vsf, a blog devoted to "collecting very short thoughts about very short fiction" from some very important people, including (to date) Robert Swartwood (Norton Hint Anthology Editor), Roxanne Gay (PANK), Sean Lovelace (Rose Metal Press Chapbook Winner), Scott Garson (wigleaf ), Ellen Parker (FRiGG), and numerous other luminaries. (continue reading)

FoxSexpert (I want that title!) Yvonne K. Fulbright in discussing "The Art of the Quickie" writes, "What takes less time than brewing a pot of coffee, or sitting through Super Bowl commercials, or filling up your gas tank? Sex-on-the-run, that is! In today’s busy world, the quickie is catching on. People are not only turned on to the time efficiency and minimal efforts involved in such 'sexcapades,' but all of the great things sex on the fly can do for your relationship." Just plug in flash fiction for "sex-on-the run," "quickie" "sexcapes" and "sex on the fly"—and there's the yearning of readers. (continue reading)

Why would any reader look to writers (of all people) for the realizations of life that will save them? (continue reading)

I first encountered Chad Prevost's work at a reading during the Meacham Writers' Workshop. He began with the piece below. (continue reading)

The founder of PostSecret designed a project, originally an art exhibition, for people to create a postcard to portray a secret they had never previously revealed to anyone. This secret must be truthful and not previously shared with anyone. Some of the secrets are frightening, some embarrassing, some hopeful. I was introduced to the book a few years bac (continue reading)

Also unique to the structure of this novel are the short, individually complete, chapters – rarely more than a thousand words. (continue reading)

John Edgar Wideman is the writer who has been the most significant influence on my own work. So, as I work through the challenge of writing my own flash pieces, I was struck to come across this piece. Wideman is not known as a "flash" writer, but a novelist, short story writer, and essayi (continue reading)

It's happened. Reading flash fiction reminds me of why I love writing poetry. As I am struggling to accomplish my check list of conflict, plot, language, a strong ending, resolution, whenever I write a flash piece, the poet in me keeps me honest. Poetics is weaved into each story. Sherrie Flick, in particular, uses a poetic style that devours me. Each sentence is electric. Her chapbook “I Call This Flirting” is filled with deeply captivating stories that are awesome, in the actual meaning awe-inspiring. Poetic. (continue reading)

I was first introduced to Ron Carlson’s writing I an introduction to writing class during the early years of my undergrad. The professor used his stories “Bigfoot Stole My Wife” and “I am Bigfoot” as examples for the frame narrative technique and for the monologue story. She never mentioned “I am Bigfoot” as a Flash Fiction piece, but it sure fits. The short, hilarious, defense Bigfoot gives captivated the class and led to one question we never thought we’d have to ask ourselves: Can we trust Bigfoot? (continue reading)

A selection of some recent great flash fiction online (continue reading)

For the second time in the history of FlashFiction.Net, Writer (Meg Pokrass) interviews a Reader (Tim Jones-Yelvington) about a flash, in this case Meg's "California Fruit" from SmokeLong Quarterly Issue #21. It appears below with the generous permission of its author. (continue reading)

Lydia Davis can do it all—write devastating short fiction (see Break it Down), write a killer novel (see End of the Story), translate Proust. (continue reading)

And I’d like to say, right here and now, there’s not a damn thing wrong with a standard incandescent light bulb, or its energy distribution (90% heat, 10% light). We glow how we can, Sara. And like you, your compact and silvery flickering soul, the new efficient fluorescent bulbs contain a toxic and deadly core—mercury! (continue reading)

Frankly, I stumbled into flash fiction and staggered around for a time. Despite writing many short stories and a couple of novel manuscripts over the past several years, it was only some ten months ago that I really came on the online publishing scene, placing short stories with Prick Of The Spindle, Identity Theory, and Miranda Literary Magazine. Next came "Iron For The Soul" published in Word Riot. Through Word Riot I became familiar with the works of such immensely talented flash writers as Elaine Chiew, Tai Dong Huai, Bonnie ZoBell, and many more, all publishing in the magazine around the same time as I. (continue reading)

One of the reasons I am as prolific as I am, which really isn't to say I'm prolific whatsoever, but to say that I truly do write, is because my little son takes long naps during which I force myself to write. I can't do housework. Not only do I detest doing dishes and get no enjoyment in scouring ovens whatsoever—but do like a clean house I must clarify—I can't clean, because he might wake, so I write. My work must be at least tangentially connected to writing for it to be considered work. Otherwise, what I am doing is wasting time. (continue reading)

The issue of misunderstanding and then trying to make sense of what is misunderstood may well be the dominant theme of modern literary fiction. Lucky us, to live in such an age, to take for granted the good fortune of having our needs so amply provided. Free from the dreary and exhausting and often icky tasks necessary for survival, released from worries of crop-swarming locusts and man-eating bears, our bellies sated and then some, we turn our attention inward. (continue reading)

Here's what Campbell did. Beginning around 1930, he broke his day into four four-hour periods, of which in three of the four-hour periods, he would be reading stories from all cultures and times. He studied Sanskrit, French, German, Japanese, Old French, Carl Jung, James Joyce, myths, and rites of passage. But mainly he read, hundreds and hundreds of stories, from ancient to modern. In the 1940's, when he began to write about his decades of reading, you'd think he'd release "Campbell's 101 Ways to Write a Story." But he doesn't. Instead he discovers the Monomyth. The Single Myth. The Lone Way. The One. (continue reading)

Lauren had such a great idea last Monday, I decided to confess, too. But which sins? Which categories? I’m shoving a piece of toast heavy with butter into my mouth right now, (I can always pop an extra Lipitor). That’s two sins, the butter and the Lipitor. I just felt a psychic poke from Randall—Stick to Flash. (continue reading)

I came to writing quite recently. I quit a bad job a little over a year ago, started writing more than I ever had, began submitting, had some acceptances, a lot of rejections and met a lot of people. I discovered the medium of flash fiction through investigating various means of publishing and have been enamored of it ever since.

That was a first attempt at writing this post, which was to describe my relatively recent introduction to flash fiction and its impact on my writing. Until I realized that my story is not particularly unique or interesting. And that it would involve the dropping of names and publications. And that I could not be much less qualified to provide guidance to anyone likewise situated.

The part of my first attempt at writing this post that felt most real and honest was discussing my own motivation for writing and continuing to write flash. Yes. I love the challenges inherent in telling or suggesting a complete story in so few words. I love the conciseness that writing flash demands, the requirement that every word serve a purpose.

But there's more. I started writing flash fiction at a significant point in my life. The unique part of my story is not the introduction but the circumstantial benefit that created and sustained my devotion to the form.

I was unemployed for fourteen months and have only just recently gone back to work. During that time, my identity was blurred. I had no job title, nowhere to go in the morning, no easy way to describe who I was. My life was stalled.

I wrote my first piece of flash very quickly. One hundred and seventy-seven words. It was a story. It had a beginning. It had an end. It took far less time to write than anything I had written before. I submitted it. It was accepted. It was published. The last part doesn't always happen but the writing part is, for me, a satisfaction of that need for completion, for doneness, for "the end."

Writing flash fiction makes me feel competent. My former boss was abusive. I left the job with little self-confidence. I questioned my skills and intelligence. I don't think those doubts will ever completely disappear.

Since I left that job, I have been published around thirty times. All but one of my published pieces was flash. Other writers have many more publications to their names at journals that are much more difficult to crack. I'm okay with that. I write. I revise. I complete. I submit. I rinse. I repeat. It always comes back to completion.

Fact: I can write more flash fiction than short stories in the same amount of time.

Fact: More submissions yield a higher likelihood of acceptances.

The correlation I draw (that I hate): More acceptances mean I'm a good or better writer.

Fact: I am lazy. It's an embarrassment, a character flaw. I sometimes keep stories shorter because I don't want to work on them anymore. I want to finish. I know with some stories there is more to be told; it's easier to just not. For me, it always comes back to completion.

Fact: This is more confession than commentary.

I truly love reading and writing flash. I wonder if our motivations for writing in the forms we write are even relevant. Does it matter if a person writes a good piece of flash because of a class requirement, or a sense of competition or envy, or a need for immediate gratification, or to feel like they have finished something? Probably not.

Does it make a person a better writer to examine why they do what they do? I have no idea.