Basically flash fiction is a short form of storytelling.
Trying to define it by the number of words is a futile exercise. Purists may give a figure of 100 words, but that is arbitrary at best.
For most a story of under 1,000 words can be considered flash fiction, some even stretch this number to 1,500 words.
What is generally accepted is that ‘flash’ is an extremely short medium in which the writer must tell a complete story. Fragmented tales are not tolerated.
The challenge is to tell the tale in a way that every word is absolutely essential, discard all words which can be considered superfluous, leave only the gleaming white bones of direct narrative.
Ernest Hemingway stated this wonderfully in his (over-quoted) dictum referencing an iceberg: Only show the top 10 percent of your story, leave the other 90 percent below water to be conjured.
Although it is a rather worn and overworked cliché it is one that should be born in mind when writing flash fiction.
Flash fiction is not a new phenomenon created by social media or the internet, it is an ancient writing form which has existed for millennium.
Some other names for this form of writing are: Sudden, fast, quick, postcard, minute, furious, and even skinny fiction!
The French often term this as ‘nouvelles’.
In China, pocket stories, minuet longs and palm-sized writings are frequently used terms.
I have also heard flash fiction referred to as ‘smoke stories’. A reference that it only takes as long to read a flash story as it does to smoke a cigarette!
I know that this is a very short post in comparison to most of my ‘Ramblings from a Writers Mind’, posts, so perhaps it should be called a ‘flash blog’!
Thank you for reading this, enjoy the rest of your day
To finish here is a flash fiction story for you to enjoy.
MISSY.
Missy turned the steering wheel sharply, swinging the car violently to a sudden halt in the parking lot. Her lips were pressed together, jaw clenched, supressing the pent up emotion that he had, once again stirred within her.
Tears began to dribble down Missy’s tender cheeks.
Why was he like this? He was a man who was so sure, so certain of himself, so controlling, that after all these years one would have thought that he did not need to be such a bully, that he would have no need to be so verbally belligerent and… well, downright abusive.
After dropping him at his office Missy had started to drive aggressively, tyres squealing on the tarmac as she pulled away.
It was then that her phone bleeped.
Missy knew instantly who this was, she felt those small tremors jumping in her stomach caused by her excitement. It felt like a kaleidoscope of wild butterflies suddenly fluttering into the air simultaneously.
It was a text message from Anura.
As soon as Missy had swung the car into that parking place, she lifted her phone and began to read, engine running and with her foot still on the break peddle.
Whilst Missy read her jaw relaxed, a wide smile spread across her face. At least there was one person, one person in this dreadful world that cared for her.
The problem with that was the fact that Anura was miles away, far across the ocean, a million miles from being able to hug Missy’s tears away right now. Why was life so cruel, why could life not be simpler, much simpler?
All the bad things came knocking at your door, in fact most of them just barged into your life without invitation. Unwanted house guests that never wanted to leave. But the good things, they were always just that little too far away to touch. They were hanging so high they were impossible to grab, to pull close enough to hold onto.
The good things you had to look for, seek out within the mists of chance.
Only then, if you were lucky enough to find one, you had to chase it, try to catch it. Most times you failed, you looked up from where you had fallen and there it was, disappearing into the ethereal shadows, the last panther of hope slinking into the undergrowth of lost possibility.
Missy set the parking break and turned off the engine. Now her tears had abated she re-read the text to see if she had missed anything, but mostly just to imagine hearing Anura’s voice speaking to her, saying ‘everything will be alright….soon everything will be alright’.
Why not read more of my short stories & flash fiction on my blog
‘A Little more Fiction’
