We’re rounding up Season One this month. That means it’s about a month until we take the best stories from each month and wrap them up in our Season One: Rebirth anthology! Along with our winning stories, we’re featuring award-winning and best-selling authors. Here they are today, stopping by to answer the question
What do you like about writing flash fiction?
I enjoy the challenge of flash fiction. It forces a writer to get to the heart of the story. To be as concise and compelling as possible—a useful skill for writing projects of any size.
I also find the ultra-short perfect for many of the extraneous, I-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-this ideas that invade my mind. Those notions that aren’t big enough for a novel, but are too good to waste.
You can create a satisfying emotional wallop in an hour… as opposed to months writing a novel!
Flash fiction is a challenge to write a tight story in 1000 words; a beginning, middle, and end that packs a powerful punch in every word.
I love writing flash fiction because it is easy to do–just a couple of hours rather than spending a couple of years on a big novel. I feel like I can relax into the story and enjoy the process more.
Flash fiction is a fun challenge to write. You have to focus on only the bare essentials of a story, without the distraction of having too much space to wander, narratively speaking. Writers are trained to be economical with words, and flash fiction forces the point. It’s also a great way to sample a longer story, to test how it and its characters feel on the page. And if we do our job well, it gives readers a quick shot of entertainment and something to ponder.
It’s your turn. What do you like about writing flash fiction?
So cool to hear from the featured authors! I think I identify most with David Farland’s reason — it’s nice to write something in a much shorter time period, haha.
I agree, Michael! I think flash fiction (and short stories in general) are a win-win for both readers and authors. It’s hard to wait for a year (or more) between books. Writing a shorter work and putting it out there while working on novels is so rewarding. And now that the delivery mechanisms for getting stories into the hands of readers are so ubiquitous, it’s a great direction to go.