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THE JOY OF

Flash fiction

Flash fiction is…

protean. It’s usually less than 1500 words, and can be as short as you want it to be. It’s also known as sudden fiction, micro fiction, postcard fiction, short-shorts, palm-of-the-hand story....It’s highly experimental writing that invades genre boundaries, It’s a type of writing that’s constantly evolving, which is what keeps it fresh, new and fascinating. The best news is that it’s new-writer friendly.

I’ve been writing…

flash fiction for more than ten years. I occasionally teach classes online at flashquake: www.flashquake.org

When I first heard the term…

I wondered what it was. It turns out that many famous writers have written flash fiction: John Updike, Virginia Woolf, Anton Chekhov, Margaret Atwood, Jorge Luis Borges, Raymond Carver.

You know, those intense moments of understanding or revelation. The form really suits writing about epiphanies.

I fell in love with it at once.…

and am absolutely addicted to writing and reading it. Every situation I experience, I find I want to put it into flash fiction form. You know, those intense moments of understanding or revelation. The form really suits writing about epiphanies.

Flash fiction helped me…

to learn to limit my words. It’s such a challenge to write. As a writer you have to ask yourself how to get the most impact with the fewest words.

I started…

an online critique workshop for flash fiction nearly ten years ago, and discovered that hardly anyone knew much about it, much less where to market it. So then I started a monthly online newsletter to help other writers find viable markets. These days, there are many markets out there, with new ones developing all the time.

The pay…

for such stories runs the gamut from no pay, to a contributor’s copy, to a more professional compensation. Like poetry, the competition for higher paying markets is fierce. But publishing flash fiction gets your name out there, and that’s helpful for anyone’s writing career.

If you want to write…

flash fiction, read a lot of the best stories. Get a feel for what makes them so effective. Every good story can be its own ‘how to’ manual. There are writing workshops or critique groups to take advantage of. Editors are mostly looking for good pieces, not big names. Due to its shorter length, editors can include several ‘flashes’ in place of one much longer piece of fiction. So there are some extra opportunities available for getting such work published. It takes work to learn to write effective pieces, but it’s also a great way to build one’s writing credits.

It hones your precision skills…

As Keats said of poetry, in flash fiction we can find ‘infinite riches in a small room.’ Flash fiction is a matter of learning how to cram valuable things into one tiny room.

by Pamelyn Casto

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