More and more people realise that they can have their own web-based literary magazines without having to be Granta or The Gettysburg Review. Flash, like everything else, is fed by this proliferation of content-hungry, virtual publishing platforms. And it flowers because Flash is ultimately good for writers, good for those running literary competitions, and for online magazine editors.
A recent piece of Flash Fiction I wrote took an hour to pen, and was polished up in a few days. I then sat on it for a week, followed this up by a bit more editing, and voila! A 2,word short story might take me a month or six, or more. Constantly writing, re-writing, and often wanting to stab my eyes out with sharpened pencils.
For webzines and literary competitions, Flash is a gift. Lots of writers submitting, almost no time needed for perusal and assessment. Loads of work published. Good feeling all round followed by excited Facebook and Twitter shares. You get publicity for your website, everyone wins. So Flash is good for me a writer , and Flash is good for my publishers mainly non-paying web platforms.
What Is Flash Fiction? And how to use short fiction to promote your book
But is Flash good for us readers? There are two types of Flash which stand as exceptions to my bah-Flash whinging. You wonder if someone has spiked your tea with Rohypnol or if everything tangible and intangible is but a dream. When it sings he sings with it, him and the bird. The tiny red heart beats inside the bird and he can see it, as he stands by the cage. And when the bird sings, it fills him with joy, his bird, with his heart, his creation.
He puts his face to the metal cage and he tells the bird, his bird, of his love and his happiness. And as the bird, the little metal bird, sings to him, he looks out of the window and he knows that one day he will have to let it go. I am still reading and re-reading this. Call it what you like, I would still prefer to call it a poem. It is a poem that encapsulates for me the transcendent mechanics of creative expression. And yet at the same time, this rigorous operation of scalpel-notions and sentence-sutures also requires us at all times to be in constant contact with something soft, and squidgy inside us, something uncomfortably emotional.
I challenge you to digest the piece fully on just one read. I have more questions than answers. What is the DNA of Flash?
Does it have one? Is it just a flashy repackaging of prose poetry at its best, i. FAGAP rather than something truly distinctive and unique? I was trying to work this out when I read this article. I think that it is because flash ask the reader to participate in the written word more fully than the more contained short story or poem. Not in the same way anyway. Readers like it because this is what real life is, you only get snatches of the people and situations around you and you have to guess at the rest. Life is about constantly using your imagination and flash gets you to think about this process.
- Stories in your pocket: how to write flash fiction | Books | The Guardian!
- Legacy of the Moon.
- An Unqualified Success.
- short story – Flash Fiction Library.
- Kindle Editions.
- Paid Flash Fiction Markets;
- Tag: short story?
Of course it does also stop you writing your novel. Thanks for this great response.
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So for this reason, I can see how Flash would work well when read aloud. But then, I so do a few paragraphs from a short story. And of course poems. Flash is neither fish nor fowl. A sharp pain shot down his spine and he heard[…]. He first heard it when he was a child. He had been home alone a lot when he was very young.
His mother worked in the nights. The back of his throat tasted bitter and his mouth was dry. He rolled over and grabbed his last cigarette, an empty bottle from last night clinking as it rolled away. The cigarette had been hidden behind his ear and was only slightly bent. There were so many lights flashing that it looked like a cosmic event. Haloes exploded over her as she walked down the red carpet-lined corridor, smiling at the flashing lights and the soft roar of fame. Hers was not a vocal fame and few opinions she shared publicly, so questions[…].
My twin was stillborn. It is all I can think of as I hear the footsteps.
Called to Love
One by one, they are the patter of little feet; wet on tiles across the kitchen and then slightly softer as they move up the stairs towards the bedroom. There is a soft clanking[…]. Above them, as it had done since the dawn of man, the magical aurora borealis danced through the Finnish night skies. Green and white light flowed[…]. But what you real-real see?
Initially, as I hacked away at my over-stuffed paragraphs, watching the sentences I once loved hit the floor, I worried. It felt destructive, wielding the axe to my carefully sculpted texts; like demolishing a building from the inside, without it falling down on top of you. Yet the results surprised me. The story could live much more cheaply than I'd realised, with little deterioration in lifestyle. Sure, it had been severely downsized, but it was all the better for it.
There was more room to think, more space for the original idea to resonate, fewer unnecessary words to wade through. The story had become a nimble, nippy little thing that could turn on a sixpence and accelerate quickly away. And any tendencies to go all purple — if it sounds like writing, rewrite it, as Elmore Leonard said — were almost completely eliminated.
By the time I got to Birchwood I had it down to words, by Warrington to , at Widnes and as the train drew in to Liverpool Lime Street there it was — words, half a page of story; with a beginning, a middle and an end, with character development and descriptions, everything contained in a Polly Pocket world. These stories, small as they were, had a huge appetite; little fat monsters that gobbled up ideas like chicken nuggets. The habit of reducing text could get out of hand too; I once took away the last two sentences of a story and realised I had reduced it to a blank page. Luckily the Phone Book liked my stories and published them, and I continued to churn them out each day on the train, while the train guard announced the delays, the tea trolley rolled past, and a succession of passengers sat next to me, reading over my shoulder.
A week after sending the manuscript to Salt Publishing I got a call from Jen, their editor. They wanted to publish it, and quickly. All I needed was a quote for the cover, a photo for the sleeve, and we were off. I don't commute that route any longer — my new job covers the whole north west of England involving train trips to Blackpool, Lancaster, east Lancashire, west Cumbria and Cheshire, so my stories have grown quite a bit longer. But last time I was on a train to Lime Street the guard's identity badge took me right back — because that's where I got the names for all of my characters.
You won't have time to describe your characters when you're writing ultra-short. Even a name may not be useful in a micro-story unless it conveys a lot of additional story information or saves you words elsewhere. In micro-fiction there's a danger that much of the engagement with the story takes place when the reader has stopped reading.