[stylist] Flash fiction

[Bridgit Pollpeter]

Robert,

Flash fiction is pretty much what it sounds like- a very short work of
fiction- a flash of a story. Flash fiction has no real hard rules, but
it's typically 300 to 800 words in length and no more, about 2 pages
worth. It doesn't have to have a conclusion persay, though it should
make sense by the end. Usually you don't have more than two or three
characters, and the plot doesn't go off on tangents since there's such a
short amount of space to develop characters and a story. Great flash
fiction realizes heavily on strong verb and nouns because the story
can't get bogged down in cluncky, messy writing that's just too long.
You must be as precise and concise as possible. Though a blog isn't
quite flash fiction, you can think of it this way to help better
understand FF though. Your thought provokers can definitely fit in the
category of flash fiction.

When I was still a student, our writing group, the CROP, started flash
fiction contest where people entered a piece of flash fiction, they
brought two as we chose preliminary winners, we charged like a dollar
for people to come and each student read their FF. We had judges who
chose three preliminary winners, these three read their second piece of
FF and then a winner was chosen. These were pretty fun events. From what
I recall, all the stories had one main character with one main plot.
Often people use stream of consciousness, though this is not necessary
for flash fiction.

Sincerely,
Bridgit Kuenning-Pollpeter
Read my blog at:
http://blogs.livewellnebraska.com/author/bpollpeter/
 
"History is not what happened; history is what was written down."
The Expected One- Kathleen McGowan

Message: 9
Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2012 11:31:35 -0600
From: "Robert Leslie Newman" <newmanrl at cox.net>
To: "writers nfb" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Subject: [stylist] Roberts submission to gratitude prompt and
	additional	thought/question
Message-ID: <033801cdcb32$b7dcda00$27968e00$@cox.net>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="us-ascii"

Hey you all,

 

Do any of us here on STYLIST who knows the ins and outs of writing flash
fiction? I need to do some studying on what it looks like; what is
accepted; learn whatever else there is to learn about it. (Boy, sure
could use an
article in "Slate & Stylist" on it.) And this is why for me ---   my
THOUGHT
PROVOKERS work in part because they are short, basically quick to read
and then get on to the business of discussion (after hopefully the
reader/listener has been intellectually provoked on an issue of
blindness). I'm thinking that my THOUGHT PROVOKERS "TPS" are flash
fiction. Toward that end, my first THOUGHT PROVOKERS were no more than
100 words in length. However, I soon went to 300 as the max. (I was
having fun in developing the stories, and still felt they were quick
enough.) Then --- the last 5  years or so, I boosted the word count up
to 700; thinking then, and now believing 700 max was the upper limit of
a quick read. (In fact, the one I sent to you all, I had played around
with it before hitting the send key and jacked the length up to 723.) 

 

What I am thinking and will do now is --- take the corrections and some
of the suggestions and do a rewrite with the intent of slimming the TP
down to 700 or less. I have always enjoyed the feeling of success after
a rewrite in which I was able to tighten up a sentence, a paragraph, a
story and still get the point across and have it remain entertaining.
(Think I need to look on bookshare for a Hemmingway novel or set of
short stories and scope them out by reading them on my notetaker with
Braille display . [I get so much more on formatting, punctuation and
sentence structure when I read in Braille. Note- I always am reading one
book on my notetaker and one via my Victor Stream[) 

 

Any other corrections or suggestions! (There is another 153 to go
through!)

 

Robert Leslie Newman