flash fiction

is kinda like the 2.0x setting on an audio book

Photo by Paul Lichtblau on Unsplash

Do you know about the literary form called “flash fiction”?

I’ve written three biographies, dozens of essays, profiles, opinion pieces, news articles, and lots of brief posts here—true stuff, historical stuff; I’m comfortable with nonfiction forms, but have wanted to try my hand at fiction—I took two online writing courses through Stanford University and I highly recommend their creative writing offerings.

But the task seemed a bit overwhelming. Until now.

Maybe you know about “flash fiction.” It’s not new, but I’m slow picking up such trends so it’s new to me. Here’s the gist of it as I understand it—

• Flash fiction is typically less than 1,000 words, more often less than 500. But there’s more.

• Micro fiction of 100 words is known as a Drabble, while micro fiction of 50 words is a Dribble. Yes, you can tell (write) a story in few words.

• And then we have micro novels and micro novellas (the creation of which is attributed to writer Ran Walker). Micro novels consist of 100 chapters, each 100 words (100 x 100), while micro novellas are 50 chapters, each having 50 words (50 x 50).

Those closed-ended templates seem constructive, not so overwhelming, and I’ve been working on a 500 word story by exceeding that count and then going back and revising, reducing. It forces one to identify what’s germane to the story and what is ancillary or nonessential. It also forces one to look doubly hard at dialogue, making every “spoken” word count.

There are a number of flash fiction magazines—the vast majority online only—and they are selective as to what they publish (my 487 word story has been rejected by two—so far!)

Here are links to some flash fiction mags, if interested:

https://flashfictiononline.com

https://flashfictionmagazine.com

http://ghostparachute.com/?utm_source=internationalwriterscollective.com

https://www.craftliterary.com/?utm_source=internationalwriterscollective.com

https://www.smokelong.com/?utm_source=internationalwriterscollective.com