What is Flash Fiction?

I discovered flash fiction in the back page of the scientific journal Nature. Nature: Futures runs a new, flash sci-fi story every week and the call for submissions asks for provocative stories that are <950 total words in length. Many, many other online magazines and publications are now publishing stories that are <1,000 words. Daily Science Fiction will even email you (for free!...so sign up...do it now) a new flash fiction story every morning. The editors at the magazine encourage readers to take three or four minutes to enjoy a new story with breakfast, or during lunch, or in bed, or whenever and wherever else you decide to read and enjoy such things in life.

In essence, flash fiction is story-telling on a microscopic scale. It poses several different types of challenges both to the reader and the writer and I have come to really enjoy it as a form of literature and entertainment. I would say that most flash fiction stories are <1,000 words in length, on average. But I have read stories that are even shorter, as small as 500 or even 100 total words. There is no universal set length for a flash fiction story...but it should be short. The advantage truly is being able to escape to another world in the time it takes to have a cup of tea or coffee in the morning...or even on the bus on the way to work.

For the reader this can be challenging on several levels. I enjoy reading detailed descriptions of setting and mood and I like to slowly sink into the story and get to know the characters. Flash fiction stories will usually set the tone and atmosphere almost immediately - some even begin in the middle of conversations and the reader is delightfully tossed right into a predicament. The reader often needs to play catch-up and sometimes will just have to accept that some aspects of the story's world will go unexplained. This forces the reader to get out of their comfort zone and engage with the plot immediately due to the story's brevity. It's refreshing in way. Of course, for those of us with short attention spans, it is not surprising flash fiction is taking off as a popular form of story-telling. In today's day and age most people don't even read a full newspaper article any more, let alone a short story or novel.

For a writer there are challenges as well. How do you tell a gripping or entertaining story in such a short span? One thousand words sounds like a lot but it is nothing more than two pages, double-spaced. That is not a lot of room to develop the relationship between the protagonist and the problem, or between two characters, or to describe the ending of the world. I think it is good practice for writers to attempt this format at least once, however, because it forces one to really examine what is essential to a story and how it can be pruned to hone in on the message.

If you are interested in science fiction like I am, make your way over to Nature: Futures or Daily Science Fiction or just Google 'flash science fiction' and see what you find! Most magazines keep an archive of previous stories free for you to peruse at your own leisure.