We love flash fiction here at Frazzled Lit, how it can make us sit up and think, and pack a gut punch into so few words. I don’t profess to be a great exponent of flash, though I’ve written many pieces that went on to get published. I won second place in the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize in 2023 with my story City Rat, and was a finalist last year in the Allingham Festival flash competition. As a reader and an editor then, I like to think that I know good flash when I read it, and the pieces that make it into Frazzled Lit are the ones that leave me a little breathless, and give me pause for thought. Perhaps a vivid image lingers with me, or the story might draw something extraordinary out of an ordinary moment.
Whatever it may be, flash fiction must strike home and affect me in some way.
During my interview with our flash-wiz friend from Fractured Lit, I reminded him of something he had said on social media the day before about the craft of writing flash fiction.
“Writing flash fiction is using the language of poetry, and the action/reaction of a stage play, all while balancing the need for context and characterisation, with the added magic of brevity and compression.”
Hard to disagree with any of that, right? But it seems a tall order. Below, I attempt to unpack it piece by piece.
The language of poetry
With so few words to play with in a flash piece, making good choices about the words you use is vital. The right word at the right point can speak volumes, and when coupled with assonance, alliteration and repetition, the power of the words you choose can be greatly magnified.
We want to be dazzled by your words but that doesn’t mean the language has to be complex and overblown. What it absolutely has to be is true to the voice of the narrator, and show a touch of elegance and crafting. Simple language is great and poetry in itself, in fact the best flash pieces I’ve read have been written in plain language that doesn’t get between me and my understanding of the work.
More than reading your words, I want to feel them!
Action/reaction
Newton’s Third Law of Motion states that for every action there is an equal an opposite reaction. What holds true in physics also holds true in story. An event occurs that puts our characters under pressure, and they react; stimulate the nerve by passing a charge through it, and the limb responds.
Action and reaction, cause and effect, this is the symmetry of causality, and our characters behave as they do because we make them.
Context and characterisation
Context means the setting and circumstances of the story, which can go a long way to helping us understand the characters within that context. They react to each other and their environment, and through these reactions they show us who they really are, even if they claim to be other.
Don’t just paint the picture for me, instead put the brush in my hand and let me paint it myself. Make the setting real by revealing pertinent and illustrative details. Likewise with your characters. Show me who they are by what they say and do. Drop them in the deep end; they may flounder for a moment, but in the end, they’ll find their stroke, and so will the reader.
The magic of brevity and compression
Use as few words as are needed to get your meaning across. Make it tight so that meaning, emotion and power can be packed into a mean punch. Distil the scene, refine the characters. Keep dialogue tight and purposeful. Use white space and omission to amplify the effect of your prose. You’ve got to get my attention and give me an experience with your flash.
Ball it up really tight, then zap me with it, baby!
I know all you great flash writers out there will have your own opinions on the above, so please feel free to leave a comment below!