What's up, everyone! My name is Eli and I am a published author with four flash fiction anthologies currently for sale and many more on the way. You can check them all out here.
What is Flash Fiction?
Flash Fiction stories are the evolution of the dime store pulp magazines. Fast, punchy, hard-hitting. You get in, tell a great story, and get out, leaving the reader breathless and wondering what just happened.
Usually, an old pulp story would run anywhere from 5k to 6k words.
A Flash Fiction story is an even more condensed package, coming in hot at around 500 words.
I say AROUND because every writer has a different word count in mind when writing them, and there is no hard and fast rule that your story has to adhere to a certain wordcount.
THAT BEING SAID, one of the things that separates my flash fiction from many others out there is that I stick to a STRICT 500 Words rule: each of my stories is EXACTLY 500 words from start to finish. Why do I do that?
PREDICTABLE: Readers know exactly how long a story will be before they even start reading it.
DIGESTIBLE 500 words is not a lot to take in. If you're sitting at the bus stop or a waiting room, you won't have a lot of time to get into a whole new universe. But...500 words? That is very easily doable.
ACCESSIBLE Not so much a Horror genre trope, but one off-putting factor about a lot of Fantasy and Dark Fantasy fiction is that there is just SO MUCH LORE that you have to learn. It can be pretty daunting. If you know you'll be drip fed the lore through stories that only take up 500 words each, it is a lot more accessible to the casual reader.
So what does this all mean to you, the casual writer who may be thinking about dipping their toes into the cool waters of the flash fiction pool? You can learn to write a flash fiction story easily and quickly by following the method that I've used to write my flash fiction stories for the past several years.
DISCLAIMER: I have read many articles and books on writing flash fiction, and have even enrolled in a couple of online courses that have really helped, as well. My favorite of all is Holly Lisle's 3 Part Online Course, How to Write Flash Fiction that Doesn't Suck Not only is it a great class, but there is also a fantastic forum for students to share their work and offer help and critique. Check it out!
Anyway, that's going to wrap it up for this Introduction as to why I love Flash Fiction. I'll be following it up in the coming weeks with my method on how i write amazing flash fiction stories, that can be used for any genre! Stay tuned!
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