The Fabulous Format of Flash Fiction

Hiya, me again!

It is Monday already, which means that another week has flown past and the time for a new blogpost has arrived. Today I felt like we should dive into a topic I myself am quite passionate about: the fabulous format which we call: “Flash Fiction”.
Last week I talked a bit about worldbuilding, and though I very much enjoyed expressing my thoughts in such a manner, I felt like it would be nice to keep the topics on a bit of a broader spectrum. The idea for this series of posts is to share my thoughts regarding a lot of different aspects of writing. This will be both about certain topics, themes, formats, but also about worldbuilding as we saw last week, or more process-related posts that you might see appearing next week (wink wink)

But without further ado, flash fiction. I’ll start by telling you a bit about flash fiction itself, what it is and how it is used. Then I’ll go deeper into my personal relationship with flash fiction, why I love it, and when I like to write in flash fiction, before finally applying everything to a short reflection of a flash fiction piece I wrote in the process. In conclusion: buckle up, for this will be a beautiful exploration of moment and emotion. All of that, simply created by word restrictions.

What is Flash Fiction?

It’s a term you might have come across, though if I’m not mistaken, the format is not per se the most popular. Sure, I had come across plenty of novels, novella’s or short stories a couple of years back, but flash fiction wasn’t anything I ever encountered. I would then also not exactly define it as ‘mainstream’, now or then.
Flash fiction is basically contained within a wider scope of the spectrum we’re all familiar with. One that stretches the boundaries of when a piece is considered a story. Flash fiction lies a little underneath the term “short story” in terms of size and word count. And this is what flash fiction is all about: stories even shorter than short stories.
A typical definition for flash fiction would be something along the lines of: “a fictional story written in less than 1,000 words in total.” Other definitions might play it even shorter, nearing limits of 300 words or other limitations such as title length. In short: There is enough ambiguity and confusion for me to now present you with my own definitions and measurements I’ve been using over the years:

• Flash Fiction: To be honest, I don’t keep too much track of word counts. The only thing that really stands out to me in the writing process is the number of pages written, so I’ll base my definition primarily on that. Generally, I would label a story as “Flash Fiction” as it stretches somewhere between 0.5 and 2 pages (~300-1000 words).
  More loosely, I would describe flash fiction as a piece that sits in between where a short story starts (~3+ pages / >1500 words) and where what I call “Micro Fiction” starts:
• Micro Fiction: These stories are ones that sit at the low end of the spectrum, generally up to around half a page (~300 words)¹.

And if you think the micro fiction length is short, you should see what people write in even less, the spectrum goes way beyond these formats. There’s plenty of examples for 100 word stories, 55 word stories, or even 6 word stories (!) (these are actually pretty cool, worth checking out!). But for this post, I will keep it condensed to the sizes and definitions listed above.

Why Flash Fiction?

Okay, that’s all nice you’ve defined these terms here, but why the hell would anyone write a flash fiction piece?
There’s loads of examples where a flash fiction piece really shines over other formats. Below I’ll briefly expand on 3 reasons why I personally like to write flash fiction, these are as follows:

1. Emotion
2. Emphasis
3. Experimentation

Emotion: All is Captured in Just a Moment

What I found to be the most important thing to convey through short formats is emotion and moments. This basically means that it's not essentially about writing a story or narrative, but rather about evoking an emotion within the reader or conveying a feeling. Especially when looking back on all the shorter format stories I have written before, I noticed this pattern, where pretty much all of them have some emotion or moment at their core.
The reason that flash fiction is so perfectly capable of doing this is because the brevity really allows you to go deep into the emotion. Additionally, if you're not focusing on putting down a story, or guiding some sort of narrative, you—as a writer—have got all the time and space to really enter the deep feelings of what it feels like to be in that moment, of what it feels like to live that emotion.
I even feel like this is a key characteristic of what flash fiction is, as it simply doesn't allow for a full story to be told. Though there will always be examples that contradict that idea.

Emphasis: Conveying the Words You Have

When you're putting down a scene in a limited amount of words, you'll have less space to expand. But what if I told you that these restrictions can be your friend just as easily as you could see them as an enemy. Writing in less words simply means that the words you do write matter. It means that every word in your story has its place. Simply put, you'll be more guided into being selective in your word usage, resulting in the strongest sentences sticking around. But also, a short piece is quickly read. Sentences will hit harder and remain fresh in reader's memories.
Put all this together and you get what flash fiction does really well: A punch! It sticks with you, lingers in your memory, and all of that simply through sticking with limited words.

Experimentation: But what if I try…

Lastly, I wanted to talk about something that strongly incentivized me to write flash fiction, which is the beautiful phenomenon of experimentation. I just wanted to try it.
I feel like this is an important one, both experimentation on its own of course, but mainly also experimentation within flash fiction. Flash fiction is the perfect format just to try out something, simply because of its brevity. You'll get the opportunity to sketch out a scene you wanted to try, write in a character voice you might be considering for a larger project, or simply to practice your writing. I know I found myself extremely guilty of the last one here, trying out different styles, paces, characters, or experimenting with dialogue, story formatting, and lots and lots of other things. A flash fiction piece is the kind of piece you will have finished in a day or two. You'll be able to try something quickly, just to see whether it clicks. In other words, flash fiction is your playground. Use it!

Putting it to practice

Over the years I have written so much flash fiction already. My first couple of experimental stories were all microstories, ones of like 300 words or less. It was so interesting to try out the format, and it has always kinda stuck with me since that moment. Nowadays, I still write a lot of flash fiction (as you might have guessed from this website), and I thought it might be interesting to have a little look at two flash fiction pieces I have written. These are both the same in a way, but also so different. Let's have a look.

The first story I wanna talk about is called "Awoken". I wrote it today after being inspired to write something in the trend of flash fiction and this blogpost. Both stories (the second one is called "Lakeside Leaps") I'll talk about are available in "The Vault" section, so I would suggest you have a read over there before continuing down the analysis (or stay and be a little confused, I won't know anyway).

So "Awoken" has got this intense vibe of an emotion, maybe a short little narrative, but the main focus is on the moment. It is about conveying what it means to be anxious at night, lying awake for a scary day the next morning. However, I also wanted to contrast this feeling with quite the opposite. So I tried to transition it into a bit more serenity—a resolution so to say.
This piece is all about emotion, every sentence is about setting the tone and conveying the vibe of this person, in their bedroom, shivering at the thought of tomorrow. I used flash fiction here for precisely the reasons I expanded on before: the strong moment, emotional punch, and emphasis on the sentences and descriptions.

I feel like the other story, "Lakeside Leaps", is actually a very interesting one to mention here as well. I mentioned earlier that flash fiction stories don't have as much of a narrative as longer stories. However, I feel like "Lakeside Leaps" is a perfect example of fitting a mini narrative inside of a short piece of text. There is a clearer arc, and though this story is very much about the moment, about the emotions and feelings, it still carries a hint of the more classical act of storytelling.

Funny how that works right? There's always possibilities and options, as long as you stay creative. Because whatever, in the end, everything is merely a guideline.

Closing Thoughts

And so, through wonderous worlds and formats we ventured, once again leading us to the closing thoughts. Just like I mentioned last week, I love this topic. I am very passionate about writing as a whole, but the flash fiction format is maybe even what did it for me in the first place. I just love the possibilities there are and the fabulous ways a format like this one can be used for all sorts of things.
I hope you learnt something, I hope you are excited or inspired, and I thought maybe I could do a little extra this blogpost. So, I would like to challenge you to your own expedition of flash fiction. I invite you to create a story centered around a single moment or emotion in no more than 1000 words (hint: use a moment or emotion you personally felt and/or are passionate/experienced with, this will enhance the power of your words greatly). Writing for yourself can be such a powerful tool, but if you do wanna share your piece of art, feel free to share it with me (see the "contact" page for more information).
Wishing you all bursts of creativity and a very happy writing session!

Footnotes

1. Note: In “The Vault” tab, I have labeled my stories on ”Short Story” or “Micro Story” length. Here, I have defined “Micro Story” as the whole of what I count as both flash- and micro fiction ↩