The preach­er came by ear­ly that morn­ing to find out why they hadn’t been in church. Mom and Dad were at the horse races. 

One of the most hor­ri­fy­ing aspects of read­ing prose is stum­bling upon a cliché. This is even more so in flash, because in short­er pieces where every word counts, clichés “stick out like a sore thumb.”

It’s always a chal­lenge to con­struct a sat­is­fy­ing nar­ra­tive arc with­in such a small space. 

Falling in love when the rain is falling in the ear­ly morn­ing and there’s no word for the way you feel except maybe plum, rainy, morn­ing, dew. 

At the end of the arti­cle I’ve put togeth­er a “how to” list, in the hopes that oth­er writ­ers may find Rodgers’ nar­ra­tive struc­ture use­ful in writ­ing a sto­ry of their own.

A flash nar­ra­tive can be built around any idea, even some­thing as sim­ple as slic­ing car­rots.

Now when­ev­er I slice car­rots on the diag­o­nal, I’ll think of you.

Here are some points to con­sid­er while try­ing to fit all that imag­i­nary good­ness from your head into that tiny block of space on a page.

An inter­view with flash fic­tion writer Joanne Mer­ri­am.

Two dead mice have drowned in the toi­let is how Pamela Painter begins her flash sto­ry “Snap Judg­ment” pub­lished in Quick Fic­tion 11.