If you know me well, you already know this story.
I cut my publishing teeth by writing flash fiction. My first publishable piece of writing was flash fiction—seven hundred words written on a school night at seventeen years old, submitted that same night to an anthology, and in print two years later.
Between submission and publication, I wrote dozens upon dozens of other short stories. Some were a couple thousand words long, others much less. For a spell, I would hop onto Twitter and use #sixwordstory writing prompts to get a little creative time in while procrastinating in college. (Note to Past Megan: That didn’t feel like a sign to you?)
I’ve shared on this blog before how writing flash fiction “exercises your writing muscles” and teaches you how to finish your work. Today, I’m going into more detail and answering the questions that might flash (ha, get it?) through your mind when I make such proclamations.
How does flash fiction “exercise your writing muscles?”
That was a pretty vague way to put that, wasn’t it? I remember jotting down that sentence and thinking, That doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Let’s begin with the obvious: flash fiction is short. Despite its brevity, there must still be a beginning, middle, and end to satisfy the reader. You can start en media res, of course, but you must have some sense of an arc, and cramming all that juicy story into a couple of hundred words without the reader feeling like they’re missing things is hard. It forces you to cut out the fluff, and it makes writing flash fiction excellent practice for layering double or triple meanings within your text. When you use fewer words, each one is more precious and must drive the story forward even more.
But perhaps you have no problem dreaming up plots that can be told in little more than a few paragraphs. Maybe you don’t tend to chase plot bunnies down rabbit holes. That’s when it’s time to take a closer look at your prose. When you receive your work back from a line editor or critique partner, are there dozens of sentences crossed out because you’ve restated something a second time? Or are you more the sort of writer who uses a few too many adverbs and adjectives when it’s possible to get your point across more succinctly? Flash fiction will force you to get up close and personal with your word choices. Even if you don’t consider this a weakness of yours like I didn’t, you’ll be surprised how much can be cut without sacrificing quality when you’re thirty words over the lit mag’s maximum word count.
Thinking on a more macro level, flash fiction’s brevity works to your advantage if you’re thinking about writing in a different genre (after lots of reading and researching the conventions and tropes of the genre). If you’ve been eyeing the world of thrillers or fantasy, penning a short story involving a stalker’s threats or a kingdom of bioluminescent elves could tell you if you have a knack for the genre without committing to dozens of hours and tens of thousands of words.
After writing flash fiction, what do I do with it?
This is potentially the best thing about flash fiction—its versatility. While it might not seem “worth it” to spend hours of work on what would only amount to a few minutes of readable material, flash fiction can be spread far and wide.
- It makes a great reward for your Patreon patrons or Ko-Fi subscribers.
- Readers love bonus material, and they would certainly enjoy a surprise short story from the lives of your established characters in a newsletter, blog post, or hidden behind a password-protected page on your website.
- You could submit your work for publication to get your name out there or earn a little income.
- If it’s short enough, you could read your flash fiction aloud while going live on social media, in an Instagram Reel, or on TikTok if you’re hurting for content ideas on those fronts.
- With enough flash fiction and/or poetry, you can publish your own collection or a chapbook.
- In the same vein as the above, you might team up with like-minded writers or your critique partners to release an anthology based on a common theme or genre.
- Keep writing flash fiction because you find it fun!
But what about my current WIP, my magnum opus?
I certainly don’t want to advocate getting distracted from the Great American Novel you are working on, or the next novella in your series, or whatever you’re working on now. I am in the middle of being distracted from completing what would undoubtedly be the best work of fiction I’ve ever written, so I understand how easy it is to stray from the path. You’re not looking for yet another excuse to abandon your project. And it’s certainly not my intention to push you to abandon your project.
But if you’re stuck where you are, and you’ve been stuck for a while? Maybe a piece of flash fiction written from the perspective of a secondary or minor character in your current WIP can jumpstart the muse.
Or perhaps you’ve just reached a huge milestone in your WIP—the first draft is completed, you just finished a round of revisions, or you sent it off to editors or beta readers. Congratulations! Having been in those shoes, I know how electrifying that feeling is. I also know it is easy to get anxious as you wait for feedback. If you’ve just finished a draft, it’s tempting to dive back into the draft too soon, before you’ve given yourself a chance to breathe. Writing flash fiction set in a completely different world would be a great way to decompress, wouldn’t it?
Both of those scenarios are well and good if you’re actively working on your magnum opus, but if you’re not, flash fiction could also work as great warm-ups before a long writing session or to get you in the same headspace or mood your world demands you be in while writing.
