There’s much to be said about the joys of flash fiction, stories of fewer than 1,000 words, that would be worthy of a long blog, but that seems counter to the spirit.
I like flash quite a bit. Ray Bradbury convinced me that I could tackle fiction writing through a flash story.
Here’s my problem: Do you remember writing assignments in elementary school? I’d get a Friday assignment for a two-page essay due on Monday, and no distance stretched longer than those two unmarked pages. The idea that I could write a novel felt more science fictional than any novel I’d ever read. Then I discovered Ray Bradbury’s collection, The Martian Chronicles. The first story, “Rocket Summer,” is less than a page. I could never be a novelist. That’s clearly impossible (I’ve written several now), but I could write a single page, if I applied myself.
Bradbury gave me permission to write short.
Here are multiple reasons to try writing flash that apply to writers of any length, including novelists.
1) The form demands every word earns its place, just like good poetry. That carefulness with language spills over into the longer forms, because every word earns its place there too, up to and including a novel.
2) Flash clears my creative pipes. If I’m bogged down on a larger piece, turning to a flash project where I start, work and finish a draft quickly helps me to return to the longer project renewed.
3) Flash feels pure to me: a single note played well, or two short notes that harmonize.
4) I like teaching them, and I encourage writers to try them. There’s real power in reaching the end, and flash gets there faster.
5) Flash allows room for experimentation because the time investment feels small. Writers can become stalled out trying to make a longer story perfect. They’re paralyzed by perfection. But flash feels like low stakes (it isn’t), and that gives courage to press on.
Here’s an example of one kind of flash fiction, a story of exactly 100 words, not counting the title, a drabble:
Dark Hole in a Dark Sky
When aliens ignored us but took the moon, humanity hardly missed it at first.
At the wood’s edge, May and I held hands, counting brilliant stars night after night.
Some owls died. Adaptation failure. Other nocturnal hunters fed at dusk and dawn.
We went to a beach to commit our lives to each other. Tidal pools dried and graceful anemones vanished. Waves lapped listlessly as the sun set and the sky grew dark and unchanging.
It seems tiny compared to the Earth’s axis destabilizing, but I longed to touch her face with moonlight on it and say, “I love you.”
Every part of a story of any length should be a part of flash fiction, explicitly or implied. A short, short story is still a story. It will have a beginning, middle and end. It will be meaningful (a story is a meaningful event. That’s why we tell it).
Does 100 words feel too short? It isn’t. Ernest Hemingway wrote a complete short story of six words: “For sale, baby shoes. Never worn.” All the parts of a short story are implied. The reader fills in the rest.
Try your own flash fiction. Write a drabble. Most of them can be written in a single sitting, and much of that sitting time will be spent trying to figure out how you got to 140 words so quickly, and how to cut out the 40 extra words while still keeping the story.
Here’s one of flash fiction’s strongest features. No extra words. Most beginning writers are wordy. They don’t trust action verbs. That’s an easy way to tell they are newbies.
For example, a beginning writer might write, The freezing, icy wind which was blowing from the north made John’s face feel cold. (15 words)
Flash version: Icy wind bit into John’s face. (6 words)
See the impact that action verbs make? Feel the energy? We don’t need to know that it was a north wind because if it is icy, it is probably a north wind. If not, unless the direction of the wind is important to your story, you don’t need it anyway. Words like cold are not necessary because if it is “icy”, it is cold. You know that. So why shouldn’t your reader? Trust your audience to fill in with their own perceptions. The verb “bit” in the sentence “bit into John’s face” is much more descriptive and (pardon the pun) biting than “made John’s face feel cold.” Using strong, active verbs gets your point across fast. And fast is what flash fiction is all about.
An easy way to learn that lesson is writing flash.
Take a single idea, make sure that what happens in the story includes a change. Stories are about events that change us. Something needs to happen, even if it’s not on the page.
Like in this piece:
Morning Bagel
I see Main St. the way it used to be: sidewalk cafes’ chairs and tables, a brew pub’s funny sign: “Beer Will Save the World. I Don’t Know How, But It Will.” Another in front of A-Page-a-Day Books: “Dinosaurs didn’t read. Now they’re extinct. Coincidence?”
Now I walk to bagels, the only shop left. Simple ingredients: bread flour, yeast, brown sugar until they run out. No cream cheese. No coffee. The baker doesn’t charge the remaining few. “Your money’s no good.”
I liked the funny signs, but they read differently in our fallen city, smoke rising still, a forlorn requiem.
Both examples here were drabbles. Write one or two, and 1,000 words will feel positively huge, but the principles remain the same: write small, focus tight, and bail out fast.
James Van Pelt has been selling short fiction to many of the major venues since 1989. He retired from teaching high school English after thirty-seven years in the classroom. He has been a finalist for the Nebula, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, Locus Awards, and Analog and Asimov’s Reader’s Choice awards. Years and years ago, he was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. He still feels “new.” Fairwood Press recently released a huge, limited-edition, signed, and numbered collection of his work, THE BEST OF JAMES VAN PELT. He can be found online at his website or on Facebook.
