Lightning Across The Page

    Flash fiction demands you impose the limitation of length on your writing. As novelists, bloggers, memoirists, and essayists we have a general idea how many words or chapters will be involved in our opus. Usually, the word count is always in flux. It is something we consider as our work comes closer to its end. 

Word Limitations

Flash fiction gives you the word count before you put word one on paper or on display. It is usually agreed that flash fiction is less than one thousand words. A short story is from one to seven thousand words, and a novella is from thirty to sixty thousand words. 

Within flash fiction competition, word lengths are usually given as 300 words or 500 words, and rarely 1000 words. Flash fiction aficionados sometimes impose a maximum length of 100 words, but that is not only very rare it is difficult to do well.

Character limitations

When you build your characters in a novel or short story, you have the time to craft them carefully with an emphasis on traits and emotions. If you are working in a three hundred word environment, you don’t have that luxury. In this genre, you usually restrict yourself to two characters, the protagonist and the antagonist. You build their character through plot development and dialog. You can have more than two characters, but usually the third or thirtieth plays off of one of the leading players.

Plot Limitations

Building the plot is where you get to excel. From the plot, you develop your stories tension and drive it to its conclusion. 

Spend some time determining how your plot will interact with the characters to drive the story. Take a moment and read A Country Ghost in the pages section. There are a few things I hope you pick up on. First, the primary characters, the ghost, and Melisa are introduced in the first two paragraphs.

The story deals with bullying, budding sexuality, and friendship in less than 300 words. 

The value of writing flash fiction

There is great satisfaction in working with flash fiction especially since it can teach you to build a real story in the most minimalist of environments.

Beyond the satisfaction of working in a difficult genre, let me propose a simple exercise which might be of serious help with your writing. Write a piece of flash fiction with a maximum length of 500 words. The topic is “A jungle.” When your story is complete, use it as the seed for a novel, or a long short story, or even a novella. Great art comes from such small ideas.

Comments are welcome and appreciated.