‘Flash Fiction’, (sometimes referred to as a short-short story), doesn’t have a set definition, but is generally considered to be a piece of fiction consisting of a thousand words or less. Certain publications of this medium are even more conservative with the word count, hugging closer to the five-hundred word mark. The word count may vary, but the intent is the same: tell us a story fast.
For many fiction writers who love the slower pace of novelization, taking their time to carefully layer characters and plot in a seamless tapestry of words, flash fiction can present a brutal challenge. How can you as an author build a world, create characters, form a plot, and deliver a satisfying ending in a thousand words or less? Here are six tips for mastering this challenging medium:
Have a Strong and Distinct Voice
The first step is by far the most important. You need a strong, authorial voice to quickly establish the world, character, and most importantly tone of your story. Readers need know what type of story they are reading. Is it sci-fi? Thriller? Literary? Humorous? The reader will be listening for your voice to clue them in on the nature of the story they’re about to immerse themselves in. If your voice is inconsistent, or worse yet boring, the reader will scan a couple sentences then move on. Remember: if someone is reading flash fiction, they are looking for quick entertainment. If they can’t get it from you, they will move on to the next story.
Have a Killer Opening Sentence
When you’re writing a story which is a thousand words or less, every sentence must be electrifying especially your opening sentence. As stated above, voice is everything in flash fiction, and the opening sentence is your first chance to let the audience hear your voice. Don’t let it come out flat. Use your opening sentence to clue readers in on what sort of story you’ve created for them. Take a look at the opening sentence below:
I walked up to the house and knocked on the door.
This is a terrible opening line. It does nothing to tell us about the world, character, or tone of the story. By contrast, take a look at this revision:
I stormed up to the crumbling, two-bit crack den these punks called home and beat the butt of my six-shooter against the door.
Notice how the intent of the sentence is virtually the same, but we’ve learned so much more about the character, world, and most importantly tone of our story. Instead of opening with passive actions (walked, knocked) we’ve opened with aggressive actions (stormed, beat) resulting in a much more engaging beginning for our story.
Economize, Economize, Economize
When it comes to flash fiction, you need to think about words in terms of currency. You’re on a tight budget; you only have a thousand words to buy a plot, a world, and characters to populate your story. Like a careful shopper then, take care to “buy” onlythose words and sentences which truly enhance your story. Take another look at our revised opening sentence:
I stormed up to the crumbling, two-bit crack den these punks called home and beat the butt of my six-shooter against the door.
This sentence is either twenty-three or twenty-five words long depending on how you count hyphenated words (for the sake of this example we’ll say twenty-five). At twenty-five words, this opening sentence accounts for 2.5% of our entire story. So did we get our ‘money’s worth’? Let’s take a look. The words “two-bit” “crack den” “punks” and “six-shooter” all point to the hardboiled detective genre, establishing world, character, and tone simultaneously. This is the key to economizing: get your sentences to pull double-duty. Don’t let a sentence just convey plot information; make it pull double or triple duty by telling us something about the character and story world as well.
Overload the Senses
Beginner writers tend to focus on the sense of sight exclusively when describing an environment. When writing flash fiction, this simply won’t suffice. In order to quickly and completely immerse readers in the story you’ve created, you will need to appeal to all five senses. Take a look at the example below:
I stepped into the dark attic and looked around. Boxes of junk were scattered all over the place. It was a mess.
This description of the attic is weak because it appeals to the sense of sight only. Compare this with the revision below.
The odor of wet, musty clothes hit me as soon as I set foot on the attic’s spongy floorboards. The wind whistled through chinks in the rafters, rustling old newspapers which lay in a maze of overstuffed carboard boxes. The darkness was tight and smothering, like the time I accidentally locked myself in the trunk of the car. A wave of nausea washed over me and I flicked on my flashlight, hoping the glow would make the place feel bigger.
Notice how in this example we appeal to all five senses: the smell of musty clothes, the sound of rustling papers, the feel of spongy floorboards, the taste of nausea, and the sight of cardboard boxes. Additionally, there’s the emotional senseof claustrophobia. By appealing to all senses rather than simply sight, you provide multiple different ways for readers to engage with your story.
Use Visual Language
When writing flash fiction, it’s crucial that you employ visual language to represent abstract themes like love, death, time, happiness, etc. Remember: overload the senses. Create a word picture that will fire a lasting image in your reader’s mind. Rather than “Jeff was embarrassed” try “Jeff felt the hot cattle-brand of embarrassment.” And don’t forget the number one rule of visual language: NO CLICHES. Don’t describe pain like a knife, grief like a raincloud or love like a fire. These are all tired cliches and your reader will breeze right over them.
Make Sure You’re Actually Telling a Story
Ultimately, none of these tips matter if the piece you’ve written isn’t really a story. For a piece to be a story, you need a character and a conflict. If you don’t have these two elements, you don’t have story; you have poetry. It doesn’t have to be complex. You just need a character in conflict. The conflict, and whether or not your character successfully resolves it, is all but irrelevant. Just make sure your character faces a conflict and takes action to resolve it. Two guys eating pizza isn’t a story, but two guys reaching for the last slice of pizza is.
Flash fiction is an excellent way to improve as a writer, no matter what type of writing you normally pursue. Having tight word constraints forces concise, visual storytelling that stimulates the senses and fires imagination. Now get out there and tell us a story.Fast.
