Do You Write Flash Fiction?

Sometimes discouragement sets in when you realize your flash fiction is taking many times longer to write than you expected.

Help is here!

This is a reprint of my article previously published in MJ Magazine, a journal written by authors for authors. Learn how to tighten your drabbles, micro fiction, flash fiction, and short stories with these tips.

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Flash fiction is a concise literary creation. Most journals classify it as a story of 1000 words or less. Other types of flash include:

Micro fiction: an even shorter form. Length varies from market to market.

Drabble: a 100-word story.

You will find other forms. However, one guideline is clear: Good flash has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Flash fiction, although short, takes longer than other forms of fiction to create. An author must choose strong words that convey maximal impact. As Mark Twain said, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

Suggested Creation Process

Step One: Get the Words Out

Write.

It doesn’t have to be good. Try to start somewhere in the middle. Provide backstory only as needed. Don’t fret about repetition or excessive descriptions.

Keep your paragraphs short. Huge blocks of text are difficult for readers to follow, especially on electronic devices.

At this point, run-on sentences, comma splices, and clichés are unimportant. You need to gush those ideas out while they’re fresh. Record the words, and worry about editing later.

Step Two: Edit

Go through your story, removing everything that doesn’t propel readers forward — especially clichés and flowery writing that could be classified as pretentious prose.

Use Tips from the Experts below to strengthen your narrative.

Step Three: Read It Out Loud

This stage helps pinpoint awkward phrases. It forces you to slow down and evaluate every word, paragraph break, and punctuation mark.

Step Four: Let it Rest

After your first rewrites, put the piece away for a few days — or at least a few hours — before you revise further. Read it out loud again. If your tongue struggles with difficult phrasing, or you lose your breath before you finish a sentence, change it.

Put the story away again.

Step Five: Make Final Revisions and Submit

Realize when enough is enough. At some point you have to stop revising, or you can lose the soul of a piece.

Tips from the Experts

Elmore Leonard provided two tidbits of advice that are essential to remember when you write flash fiction:

“Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.”
“Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.”

Stephen King says:

“I’d rather let the reader supply the faces, the builds, and the clothing as well.”

William Strunk Jr. recommended:

“A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires … that every word tell.”

A common thread in the above recommendations is to describe only what you need to create your story. In fact, you can tell a tale without any description, exposition, or backstory.

Consider the following drabble:

Tech Support

“Press one for support —”

[Beep]

“Stupid menus. Where the heck are the people?”

…

“Good afternoon. This is Larry. How may I help you?”

“I didn’t call the dairy.”

“LARRY, ma’am.”

“Larry, you’ve sent the wrong color. Again. I asked for white, but that’s not what you shipped.”

“We’ll fix that. Any other problems?”

“Aside from the flimsy construction?”

“Customer code, please?”

“A-532283.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t find you in the system.”

“Your telephone support is as rotten as your stocking support.”

“Stockings? Ma’am, I think you’ve called the wrong number. This is Foundation Electronix, not Foundation Sox.”

END

Did you assign genders to the caller and the individual who answered? Did you imagine an accent for the tech person? Do you need to know about the caller’s age or appearance?

Here’s another drabble:

The Ancient Busker

The busker’s straggly hair didn’t cover the scars on his sun-weathered face. Nor did his threadbare clothing conceal his emaciated frame. His gaunt fingers shivered as they coaxed music from his battered guitar.

But his voice rang true.

His tunes enticed curious passersby, drawing them ever closer. He wove magical melodies that nobody had ever heard before: bewitching music from the reaches of his ancient soul.

By the end of the day, his cardboard donation box overflowed with bills and coins.

And the enchanted spectators, whose pockets had been picked clean by his cohort, never reported their losses to authorities.

END

Without rereading the story, how would you describe the busker and his surroundings? Did you envision an old man in a brown coat with patches on the sleeves? Perhaps wearing boots that need repair? Did you see a sidewalk? An acoustic guitar? Did you hear his voice?

Does the story describe his coat? Does it place him on a street corner? Does it say the guitar is acoustic? Does it describe the cohort?

No.

The piece provides only essential details. Your imagination fills in the blanks.

Analyze Your Adverbs and Adjectives

Adverbs and adjectives can slow your plot and bloat your word count. Consider the following examples and decide which versions are stronger.

walk quietly ==> tiptoe
laugh nervously ==> titter
really big ==> enormous
utter a low, complaining cry ==> whine
move slowly with one’s body close to the ground ==> creep
cry out with a loud, strong, clear sound ==> yell
face covered with deep, squiggly lines ==> wrinkled face

Search your writing for adverbs and adjectives. Often you can remove them or find a more concise version.

Remember Mark Twain’s advice: “As to the adjective, when in doubt, strike it out.” And: “If you see an adverb, kill it.”

Only add descriptions that push your story forward. Do you have enough room to describe textures, colors, scents, sounds, and feelings? Insert if needed, perhaps to create a mood or individualize a character.

Descriptive writing decelerates. Use that to your advantage when you want to provide a break in intensity or give the reader time to reflect.

Create Concise Dialogue

In everyday speech, we use incomplete sentences, contractions, and clipped phrases. We mumble “um” and “er” as we pause to think about what we want to say next. We might have a thick accent.

Dialogue in fiction should provide only the essentials. We don’t need to discuss the weather, unless a tornado is about to hit and it’s part of the plot. We don’t require names except for clarity to establish who is talking. If our fiction is based in modern times, we should use contractions.

Consider the following snippet of dialogue:

Martha shook Harry’s right shoulder. “Um … Harry, you are um … about to fall asleep.”

Harry blinked both of his eyes. “Er … Um … Yeeees, Maaaartha, ahhh guess you are rahhht.”

Readers should already know that Harry has a drawl. Let’s do a rewrite to tighten the dialogue and delete extraneous words in the action beats:

Martha shook Harry. “You’re about to fall asleep.”

Harry blinked. “Yes, I guess you’re right.”

Readers can assume that Martha shakes one of Harry’s shoulders, and that he blinks both his eyes.

Words to Avoid

Here’s a partial list of words and phrases to avoid:

a lot
absolutely
actually
all things considered
amazing
any
bad
basically
big
essentially
funny
given the fact that
good
got
hopefully
incredible
interesting
just
kind of
literally
little
many
maybe
nice
perfect
perhaps
pleasant
pretty
probably
quite
really
seems
so
sort of
stuff
suddenly
things
totally
truly unique
usually
very

If you notice any of the above in your writing, see if it’s possible to replace or remove them.

Avoid There Is/There Are

Consider the following sentence pairs and decide which versions are better:

There were three bottles lying on the table. Three bottles lay on the table.

There are many authors who write flash fiction. Many authors write flash fiction.

There is only one road that leads east. Only one road leads east.

There was a disagreement between the man and his wife. The man and his wife disagreed.

In each case, the italicized sentence is more active and requires fewer words than its non-italicized companion.

Avoid Clichés

To establish a memorable writing style, use your ingenuity to omit clichés or develop unique expressions.

Consider:

She was as mad as a wet hen. (Cliché)

She was madder than a hibernating grizzly ousted from her winter lair.

She was furious.

Her face contorted into an angry scowl.

The first three versions tell. The last one shows, which leads us to:

Reconsider “Show, Don’t Tell”

Sometimes you have to ignore the “show, don’t tell” mantra. Showing usually requires more words. In flash you can often chop information in unimportant areas to create more room for showing, but it’s not always possible.

Refer to the previous section. “Her face contorted into an angry scowl” requires seven words. “She was furious” requires three.

Another Example:

The author opened the car door, turned on the ignition in his 2015 Ferrari, and drove speedily to the awards banquet in two minutes flat.

The author sped to the awards banquet in his new Ferrari.

Hone your flash fiction techniques, and that Ferrari might belong to you someday!