Improve Your Writing in a Flash

When I started paying attention to my writing (as opposed to when I first started writing!), there was something around called short-short stories; these days it’s known as flash fiction or sudden fiction, a very short storytelling form.

A famous example of the shortest form, six-word fiction, probably erroneously attributed to Ernest Hemingway is: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Hard to outdo that for drama and brevity!

And of course very short fiction not every writer’s literary cup of tea. But I’d like to suggest that, no matter what you write, trying a flash-fiction piece or two might actually improve whatever else you do.

How short is short? That depends on the publication (well, you do want to be published, right?). Generally, anything under 1,000 words is considered flash fiction, though some purists put the number at 100. Others push the envelope at 25. You get the drift.

Don’t be seduced by the length: good flash fiction is extremely difficult to write. When you’re dealing with so few words, every one of them has to count, every one of them has to be just right.

On top of that, you still need a story arc: a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is how flash differs from a vignette: you still need to tell a story, make a point; and the fact that you need to do it with so few…