Flash Fiction: How To Write Short Stories With Lasting Impact

So you’re stuck on one of the chapters of your draft. You don’t know how to go about developing your protagonist… or maybe, you want to introduce another character that will support the protagonist in resolving the conflict.

If you dread thinking about how, or whether a character should live or die, check this article on developing characters.

If you’re looking for other ways of effectively presenting a character’s experience, with no nonsense, then you must know how they are treated in flash fiction.

What is Flash Fiction?

Flash fiction is short—very short—fiction, that is nevertheless a self-contained work. Generally, flash fiction runs between 100 and 1,000 words. It’s generally for readers with little time, or short attention spans.

The terms for this fiction form can vary. Works at the shorter end of the scale—100 to 300 words—are sometimes dubbed “micro-fiction”. Slightly longer stories—overflowing to 1,500 words—are occasionally called “sudden fiction”. Anything between 1,000 and 10,000 words is a short story, or perhaps a novelette.

Despite the brevity of flash fiction, it is a complex and difficult form to master.

Some question whether it is possible, in so few words, to tell a moving story. But then, storytelling is never easy.

Well-executed flash fiction can be more memorable than longer works. There's no room for the bad writing to hide.

Take for example Ernest Hemingway’s A Very Short Story. It’s just over 600 words, but heartbreaking. Using fewer, but stronger words can better encapsulate the writer’s thoughts and the character’s emotions.

(An even shorter story, sometimes misattributed to Hemingway, is only six words: "For sale. Baby Shoes. Never Worn.")

How to Write Flash Fiction

Like other stories, flash fiction has characters, plots, and conflict. It must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It should be complete and—even more than in longer forms—leave the readers no doubt about what happened or how they feel about it.

Unlike short stories or novels, there is no time to develop your characters in flash fiction. Flash fiction does not need it. Here are some suggestions on how to write successful flash fiction:

1. Start the story like you are about to end it. Since there is not much time to explore the setting, many flash fiction writers suggest starting the story somewhere in the middle. This will also help you cut down on unnecessary settings and conflicts. Give out a lot of information at the start, then take the readers deeper in the succeeding paragraphs.

2. Pick a conflict. You must give your story a resolution, so you cannot have too much going on. Get right to your main conflict—pick one, stick to it and resolve it. Remember to put it in context. The reader must know which angle to focus on.

3. Skip the other characters. You do not need a mass of characters in flash fiction to deliver an interesting story. Just choose your most important character, or characters, and how they feel in a certain scene. There is no room for background stories or flashbacks. Even character names take up space.

4. Learn the art of brevity. Using too many words can be a crutch. The poor idea can be camouflaged by flowery language. Imagine Shakespeare as rewritten on Twitter, and boil the story down to its essence. Even 100 words are more than 280 characters. Say more with fewer words. Sometimes, what you leave out is what leaves the reader haunted.

5. Go for the understated beauty of life. When picking a theme, look for something that people are familiar with, even take for granted, then make them see it differently. Make them care.

6. Don’t be afraid to trim. Even if a sentence is beautifully written, if it doesn't advance the story, get rid of it. Writing is therapeutic anyway. View the weeding down of your first draft as one of writing's alternative therapy examples… maybe not as satisfying as crafting the perfect sentence, but still enjoyable, beneficial, and necessary. But don't just throw it away. It might form the basis for another flash fiction!

Writing flash fiction may be challenging at first, but once you know what story you’d like to tell and who your character is, you can finish it in odd moments throughout your day, like while riding the subway.

For inspiration, try reading other flash fiction. The New Yorker regularly publishes interesting short, short stories. There are many anthologies of flash fiction, too, some compiled during the annual National Flash Fiction Day competitions in the UK and New Zealand. It also helps to read poetry. Poems are good at telling one critical moment or scene.

If you are planning to give flash fiction writing a try, start writing. If your draft ends with more than 1,500 words, review some of the suggestions mentioned above. 

Finally, pick out the best title for your flash fiction. There are exercises that can help. Come up with at least 10 titles. The other nine might inspire other stories!

Author

Patrick Bailey is a professional writer who works mainly in the fields of mental health, addiction, and living in recovery. He attempts to stay on top of the latest news in the addiction and the mental health world, and enjoys writing about these topics to break the stigma associated with them. Patrick is currently a writer for Mountain Springs Recovery as well as on his own blog.

How To Come Back. How To Stay Motivated.

Before we start: I looked dozens of articles in research for this one, hoping to find at least one tip that wasn’t drivel. Across the board, every article was utter shit. Apologies for the bluntness of those words, but to the best of my knowledge, this is the only good list on author motivation available on the internet.

Okay, ranting aside, we all try to keep writing - we really do - but the fact is, life happens. “In-between projects” is a state that, if the author isn’t careful, can become permanent; worst of all, it can happen to anybody, completely irrespective of the author’s innate ability (see Harper Lee, Emily Brontë, Ralph Ellison).

Whatever your personal reasons are for not keeping up with your writing: time, stress, et cetera... the following step-by-step guide won't just help you get started again; it'll keep you writing!

1) Write What You Want To Read

I love challenging myself. I really do. It’s fun to write something that is outside of your normal comfort zone… but there is a reason why Stephen King wrote primarily Horror, and Philip K. Dick primarily Science Fiction: these are the genres that felt most natural for them to write.

Especially when you’re coming back from a long hiatus, you should be writing in genres that you know inside and out.

2) Don’t Just Plan… Write Yourself A Prompt!

Write out a brief sequence of events for every chapter before you begin. Keep it short, but precise. Don’t write things like, “I’m going to introduce my main character.” That's too vague to be helpful.

If I’m writing the first chapter of a greek tragedy, I should write something like--

“Open on a conversation between King Theitis (our main character), and King Linus of Zebanee. King Linus boasts that his top warrior can beat any two of Theitis’s. Theitis, in anger, responds by saying that Tralis, his general, could beat his warrior with one arm behind his back. The battle is set up, and Tralis dies - solely because his arm is tied behind his back.  

Point of Scene: This does many things; most notably, the scene shows Theitis’s pride and introduces the conflict between General Tralis’s troops and the Royal Crown (which will eventually lead to Theitis’s downfall)."

With this self-written prompt, we know where the chapter is going, and we know WHY it is being written… that takes a lot of pressure off the writing, which makes us far less likely to procrastinate.

3) Always End On A Cliffhanger

Conversely, never EVER stop at the resolution of a plot point. Mini resolutions are the death of motivation. When you reach a plot resolution, force yourself to keep writing to the next cliffhanger.

When Tina has a gun to her head, it is obvious that something important will happen. The urgency is omnipresent. In seminars, when I talk about this idea, people always complain that one shouldn’t stop when their writing is flowing. I totally disagree. If you know what happens when you stop, you’ll know what happens when you come back.

For myself, I almost always stop in the middle of a sentence. I’ll leave urgent half-sentences hanging for days, waiting desperately to be finished. Eg. “In a sudden burst of speed, she smacked the gun away and leapt behind...”

Go ahead. You know you want to.

 4) Utilize The Technology-Free Hour

Everyone in my life has great respect for my writing hours, and this is solely because I, myself respect my writing time. Here’s how I do it--

A) I tell everyone who is likely to contact me that I will be writing for the next hour.

B) I turn off my phone.

C) I turn over an actual hourglass (See Tip #7), and don’t leave the chair until every grain of sand has fallen.

D) I limit my internet access to searching for synonyms or doing specific, relevant research on my writing. You might think, if you have writer’s block, that you will stare at a blank word document for the full hour… you’d be wrong. I have never, not one single time, stood up from one of these writing hours without having written something. Fact is, you can only stare at a blinking cursor so long.

Stop worrying about finishing your novel. Just plan that next hour, and slowly, it WILL get done.

5) If You Can’t Force Yourself To Write…

So you’ve read the above tip twenty times, but it hurts you to even think about writing. It’s never as good as you want it to be. You schedule the hour, but can’t make yourself respect it, and find yourself doodling or watching TV…

Well, if you can’t force yourself to write, use your writing time better. Watch something related to your project. Read something that will make you think about the ideas you want to include. The more stories that you burn through, whether in film or the written word, the more excited you will get about the many things you can incorporate into your own fiction.

 6) Join A Writer’s Group

Okay, okay. Not everyone has the time or the inclination. I, myself, haven’t been in a LONG time. That said, when I was writing Tiny Instruments, knowing that the writer’s group was eagerly awaiting the next chapter gave me some kind of motivation when thoughts like, “But the odds of me becoming successful are so slim!” and “But nobody reads books anymore anyway!”, came creeping in.

If your primary motivation comes from others, there’s especially something to be said about surrounding yourself with like-minded individuals who are all working toward the same goal. There’s a certain energy that gets your thoughts flowing.

As far as joining a group goes, my advice is this--

If it speaks to you, do it. If it doesn’t, don’t.

 7) Buy Yourself A New Pen, A New Hourglass, Or A “New” Typewriter

Weird advice, huh?

If you can’t afford it, I wouldn’t recommend doing this one often. Still, this tidbit is far more effective than you might first believe.

The logic is simple. If you have a REALLY nice pen, you’re going to want to use it. If you’re anything like me, you’re going to be just dying to put that Mont Blanc on the paper… go ahead. Feel how smooth it glides across the sheet as you crank out the world’s next great novel!

8) Realize That Crappy Writing Is Better Than No Writing

Perfectionist tendencies in writing are wonderful. They allow you to bring your writing to a whole new level as you constantly search for that perfect turn of phrase… but if you don’t knock it off, you’ll never publish a damn thing! Repeat after me: The more you write, the better you get.

There’s nothing wrong with taking pride in your work, but over-perfectionism can strangle a writer’s career; believe me, I’ve suffered with this throughout all of mine.

It's that simple. Follow the above, and soon, you’ll be holding your finished novel in your hands.

Four Elements of The Perfect Story

Complete Characters

People (myself included), often make the mistake of saying that you need “relatable” characters. Being able to see yourself in a character is VITAL to enjoying a good story… that said, you don’t have to be a serial killer to appreciate Hannibal Lecter – you just have to be able to understand him.

Hannibal’s brilliant mind (in Red Dragon especially, but also in the film Silence of the Lambs), leads him to make horrible conclusions on society as a whole, and to do horrible things… but given his past and the way his mind works, we can understand how he functions. The scary thing about him comes when we see parts of our own mindset wrapped up inside him.

He is well-crafted. He is complete.

Structure

In screenplays, there exists a perfectly defined pre-determined structure. The average screenplay is about 110 pages (this has changed over time, but is basically universally agreed upon). It contains a beginning of about 27 pages, a middle of about 56 pages and an end of about 27 pages.

Well, in novels, it isn’t that simple. That said, books without structure are obvious to almost everyone. Characters often find themselves stumbling across things - purely by chance - that resolve difficult plotlines. They go pages and pages without doing anything ultimately relevant to the book.

Note: On the subject of relevance, let’s say the main character breaks her car and then fixes it… well, if it had never broken, we would be left exactly we are. Or, let’s say they get lost in the woods and find their way out… if they hadn’t gotten lost, again, we would be left where we are.

The structure is the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING when it comes to your readers completing your story or book. It is the guiding light. When we put down our book and think, “I wonder if Jimmy will be able to tell Sally how he feels”, that is the structure keeping us involved. Something should always be left unresolved until the final pages. At any given moment, we should be able to put down the book, and be in the middle of something that needs to be resolved.

Surprise!

The structure is the guiding leash that pulls us along. That said, if Frodo must destroy the ring of power, and everything goes as planned, we have an incredibly boring story. He sneaks in without trouble, plops the ring in the fire, and everyone is saved. Hurray!

…

Except the path is too direct. When things are too easy, it’s hard for us to get invested in the wonderful characters that exist, or in the beautiful theme that is laid out before us. We need to have our emotions toyed with. We need the possibility of failure. We need Surprise.

Don’t imagine that surprise is the opposite of structure. It is NOT. Surprise allows you to shift your story (See Story at the bottom of the Theme section). This means, new things happen. New opportunities present themselves. Still, the overall structure remains.

Imagine that you’ve created a maze for your readers. The maze leads to a wonderful, riveting conclusion that you’ve had planned for quite some time. Your structure is the maze as a whole. When you introduce surprise, you are simply shifting a wall in the maze; your character can no longer go the way that your reader imagined... but that’s okay because, when you shift a wall, another way opens. Regardless of how many walls you shift, eventually, the path will lead to the center.

Theme

Hansel and Gretel shouldn’t have gone into a stranger’s house. That is why they’re eaten.  That’s the theme of the story. That’s why it exists. That’s what the story, at its core, is about.

This doesn’t mean that the perfect story must always have a MORAL (though there is nothing inherently wrong with a moral). It does, however, need a message. It is quite likely that ALL of your favorite books have a message. Good books that seemingly have no message, typically have an atypical message; eg. “There’s no meaning to the universe. Everything is random and pointless.”

Don’t confuse STORY and THEME.

Your story is what happens: Hansel and Gretel leave a trail of breadcrumbs. The birds eat the breadcrumbs and they get lost. They see a house of candy. A woman invites them inside. She turns out to be a witch. They get eaten.

The Theme is WHY the story exists.

You should always have a general theme in your mind when writing a book – even on page one.