Flash Fiction: for writers, readers, editors, publishers, & fans

Monday

Talkin’ ‘Bout Joe Campbell & The One Way To Write a Story

Here’s what Camp­bell did. Begin­ning around 1930, he broke his day into four four-hour peri­ods, of which in three of the four-hour peri­ods, he would be read­ing sto­ries from all cul­tures and times. He stud­ied San­skrit, French, Ger­man, Japan­ese, Old French, Carl Jung, James Joyce, myths, and rites of pas­sage. But main­ly he read, hun­dreds and hun­dreds of sto­ries, from ancient to mod­ern. In the 1940’s, when he began to write about his decades of read­ing, you’d think he’d release “Campbell’s 101 Ways to Write a Sto­ry.” But he doesn’t. Instead he dis­cov­ers the Mon­o­myth. The Sin­gle Myth. The Lone Way. The One.

Wednesday

Flash Focus: Victor Stabin Brings You the Letter B

For almost three years, wher­ev­er he went, Vic­tor Stabin brought a dic­tio­nary along. Comb­ing through over 8,000 pages of a vari­ety of dic­tio­nar­ies, he came up with the allit­er­a­tions that inhab­it this work. 

Thursday

Flash Craft: Tragic Urgency in Flash Fiction

The short short, pieces one-thou­sand words or less, aris­es as the per­fect form to con­tain such a dynamic–its Dionysian need to end almost before it begins and its Apol­lon­ian quest to arrive at mean­ing before, like light­ning, the whole piece disappears–infuses the short short form with tremen­dous ten­sion, some­thing I call “trag­ic urgency.”

Wednesday

Flash Focus: Victor Stabin Brings You the Letter A

For almost three years, wher­ev­er he went, Vic­tor Stabin brought a dic­tio­nary along. Comb­ing through over 8,000 pages of a vari­ety of dic­tio­nar­ies, he came up with the allit­er­a­tions that inhab­it this work. 

Wednesday

Wednesday Therapy: Write To Confront Your Fears Through Action

…for that need to face the fear of uncer­tain­ty with each word, and as Lacan tells us, even our words con­tain only an uncer­tain approx­i­ma­tion of the Real, but still we set out word after word, like bread­crumbs and bricks…

Tuesday

Flash Chapbook Review: Cooper’s Phantasmagoria Is Fantastic

Thomas Cooper’s flash fic­tion col­lec­tion Phan­tas­mago­ria is a grip­ping 44-page com­pi­la­tion of intense short pieces con­struct­ed on themes of love and loss. T

Thursday

Thursday Flash Craft: Desire & Narrative Structure in Writing the Short Short

Nar­ra­tive-based flash pieces tell a sto­ry. The basic struc­ture of such a nar­ra­tive might go some­thing like this: (1) some­thing cre­ates a very strong desire in the char­ac­ter, a desire which cre­ates the need for (2) some kind of action(s) to ful­fill this desire, lead­ing ulti­mate­ly to (3) a resolution/revelation.