{"id":451161,"date":"2021-10-18T11:13:10","date_gmt":"2021-10-18T11:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/?p=451161"},"modified":"2025-05-09T10:45:21","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T09:45:21","slug":"writing-flash-fiction-complete-guide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/writing-flash-fiction-complete-guide\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing Flash Fiction: A Complete Guide"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Have you been meaning to write flash fiction, but been put off by the different word counts and apparent \u2018rules\u2019?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this guide you\u2019ll get a brief introduction to flash and its history, then we\u2019ll talk about the essential elements to include in your flashes. I\u2019ll also give you a checklist as an aide-m\u00e9moire at the end of the guide. And if by the end you feel confident enough to enter a few competitions, check out our guide to the best flash fiction competitions<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Is Flash Fiction?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Smoke-long\u2019 is my favourite (albeit not very healthy) description for a piece of flash fiction, because it refers to the time it takes you to read the story \u2013 the same amount of time it would take you to smoke a cigarette. Some flash fiction is even shorter, one puff-long if you like. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Japanese writer Yasunari Kawabata referred to them as palm-of-the-hand stories. Flash fiction is also known as fast fiction, sudden fiction, postcard fiction, a micro-story, a nanotale, a short short, amongst other names. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what exactly is flash fiction? In a nutshell it simply means very short fiction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The longest flashes are generally considered to be 1,000 words, the shortest 6 words. Try writing<\/a> and reading each of these and you\u2019ll soon realise there\u2019s a big difference. In 2007, the Guardian<\/em> newspaper challenged several well-known writers to write 6-word short stories. Take a look<\/a> and decide for yourself whether they succeeded. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just as a short story<\/em> isn\u2019t a truncated novel, flash fiction isn\u2019t a truncated short story. The challenge, with very short fiction, is to tell a complete story within the word count, one thing that differentiates flash fiction from prose poetry. This gets harder the shorter the word count, and that sense of challenge is one reason flash fiction is so popular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, in the above Guardian<\/em> article, Blake Morrison\u2019s story \u201cWomb. Bloom. Groom. Gloom. Rheum. Tomb\u201d gives a sense of a whole life, with a beginning, middle and end, or an overarching narrative \u2013 but contains no detail \u2013 whereas Jim Crace\u2019s \u201cSee that shadow? (It’s not yours.)\u201d suggests a story, which readers tell themselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arguably a piece of flash fiction is unique in the way it invites the reader to tell themselves the story like this. Other forms of prose writing do this, but because of their length, they also provide detail and narratorial incursion. In flash, this detail and incursion has to be nifty, playful \u2013 or cut out entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\r\n

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Edit your short story to perfection<\/p>\r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/div>\r\n

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Working on a short story or collection?<\/h2>

Get actionable and professional editorial feedback on your short story or a collection up to 50,000 words. We’ll match you with an editor who can help you polish your manuscript ready for submission. Express Services and Premium Member discounts are available.<\/p>\n<\/div>

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Hemingway\u2019s $10 Bet<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The above two stories were written in response to the famous 6-word short story allegedly written by Ernest Hemingway as part of a bet over dinner, which won him $10: \u201cFor sale: baby shoes, never worn.\u201d As with Crace\u2019s story, this one suggests<\/em> a story which the reader then infers, and it\u2019s probably the most famous flash fiction story in circulation today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, it is likely Hemingway never wrote this story. You can read the background in this article<\/a>. There isn\u2019t much evidence that the bet took place, and if it did, earlier versions of the story had appeared in newspapers several years earlier, so he was probably repeating something he had read, as an amusing riposte. 

Writers from all over the world have used the flash form, including Jorge Luis Borges, Kate Chopin, and Italo Calvino. In fact, ancient myths and fables can be considered a form of flash fiction. This article by Sandra Arnold<\/a> will give you a sense of the history of flash fiction \u2013 very handy if you want to learn about flash fiction in literature. She attributes the first use of the word \u2018flash\u2019 to an anthology edited by James Thomas in 1992 \u2013 giving more of a sense of the experience of reading the finished story, rather than the word length.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flash Fiction Sub-Genres<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Flash fiction has a range of subgenres but in the same way, they don\u2019t necessarily have strict definitions either. But if you\u2019re looking for a general guide to flash fiction word counts, we\u2019re here to help. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s a rundown, from the longest to the shortest:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Novel-in-a-flash and Novella-in-a-flash. This is essentially a sequence of flashes up to around 18,000 words.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

2. \u2018Sudden fiction\u2019 or simply \u2018flash fiction\u2019 refers to stories of up to 1000 words or sometimes 1500 words, or two pages of an anthology. The \u2018up to\u2019 is important. These are usually loose guidelines. <\/h4>\n\n\n\n

3. Nanofiction or microfiction refers to stories up to 300 words, but the constraint can be stricter than that. Here are some examples:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n