Tuesday
The writer Shaula Evans recently began a discussion on flash fiction in her Zoetrope Virtual Writer's Studio room it takes a village to raise a writer. Here's how she began that discussion:
I've been reading up on flash fiction over the holidays.
There seems to be zero consensus about what flash is. Cool! That's exciting! That means we're still in the inchoate stage of a new form with room to experiment and play.
I could discern two main camps in the battle to define flash. One camp says flash is all about word count: it's a story, just like a short story, only shorter. And these extra-short stories have word counts of around 1000 words or less, depending on who you ask.
The other camp says flash is all about /not/ being a short story. It's about capturing a moment, but not just a vignette or a snapshot, a moment of transformation, of insight, of epiphany. It's about seizing THE moment when something happens, when something shifts.
(I've grossly oversimplified. There's lots of nuance out there in other people's ideas, and there's more of a continuum of thinking than a dichotomy. These just seem to be the two poles of the thinking that I've encountered.)
I've betrayed my bias here: I think the second idea is more interesting. But at least half the important people in writing disagree with me.
I'm coming to realize that it's pretty much impossible to reconcile these two approaches to flash, the it-is-a-story concept versus the it's-not-a-story concept.
I'm also coming to realize that writing the stories I have in me to write, and letting the story dictate the form, is the truest way for me to write.
I'm raising the question here because I'm very interested in what YOU think Flash is. Do you read it? Do you write it? What works for you? What misses the mark? Do you care about flash at all or is the form not for you?
I'm not interested in definitive answers—they're a good way to shut down a conversation, and a bad way to stir up creativity. But I'm very interested in your opinions, and your experiences and impressions as writers and readers.
What are the hallmarks of good flash for you as a reader? And what do you try to do with flash as a writer?
What's flash all about anyway? What do you think?
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In the next week or so, I'll add some of the responses Shaula received to her questions, and of course I'd love to hear your own thoughts about "what's flash all about anyway?"
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From Allie
January 3, 2010 at 6:08 pm
For me, flash is about taking the reader and the main character on a journey. It needs to come full circle, taking us somewhere even if it’s not a happy place that we end up. It doesn’t matter if that takes 300 or 3000 words.
To me, the main difference between a flash and a short story is the amount of detail. A short story will tell you the color of the wallpaper in order the set the scene. A Flash will only talk about the wallpaper if it moves the story forward in some important way. Flash will have fewer characters that all play a vital role. A Short will name the bartender just because he’s there. Flash is a faster pace; a Short will meander. It’s a little about word count more about content.