The eigh­teen sto­ries in Clau­dia Smith Chen’s flash fic­tion chap­book The Sky Is A Well And Oth­er Sto­ries aren’t for the faint-heart­ed.

Flash Fic­tion Meme: Willie Won­ka!

There are so many def­i­n­i­tions out there. What dis­tin­guish­es a flash fic­tion from, say, a prose poem? I don’t think there is any one answer but the dis­cus­sion is an inter­est­ing one.

I’m con­vinced that through read­ing wide­ly we inter­nal­ize the archi­tec­ture of how sto­ries are told. We sub­con­scious­ly sense when a good sto­ry is being told to us, and the oppo­site is also true: we under­stand when a sto­ry is not being told well. 

Dis­as­ter Girl!

I can’t help but feel that writ­ing fic­tion and non­fic­tion has made me a more well-round­ed writer. 

Hip­ster Flash Fic­tion Kit­ty!

As a writer, I’m drawn to flash fic­tion and short-short sto­ries that pack a raw, emo­tion­al­ly charged punch. In this piece, I am in awe of how Chen uti­lizes descrip­tive details, action, and movement–plus oth­er lit­er­ary devices–to pro­duce a pow­er­ful, com­plete sto­ry in less than 150 words. In this arti­cle, I dis­cuss the tech­niques I admire.

The Most Inter­est­ing Flash Meme.

I like to use allusions–a ref­er­ence to anoth­er lit­er­ary or his­tor­i­cal per­son, place, or event with­out explic­it identification–in my final sen­tences.