What is Flash Fiction?
Flash fiction is a very short story, usually somewhere between 750-1500 words. This isn’t a hard and fast range, though. Some flash fiction runs shorter. Some longer. And there are many names for this kind of fiction: postcard fiction, micro-fiction, short short story, and sudden fiction. These terms are sometimes differentiated from one another. For example, micro-fiction often refers to the shorter of the bunch, under 400 words. Still, there’s a lot of wiggle room. Flash fiction doesn’t give you the permission to skate by with an anecdote or a vignette. You still need to adhere to the demands of story: crafting character and conflict, increasing the intensity of tension, and building a story arc. It’s still a short storyjust shorter. Start with a focused conflict. Think small. You would need a novel to cover the emotional difficulties of raising a child who does not communicate. So, for a flash fiction, you want to narrow the scope. In Alice Schell’s “Birthday,” Lukie, a young child
