There’s nothing like the instant gratification of a good flash story. Flash fiction, usually defined as under 1,000 words, is all about the art of compression and brevity. There is no room to over explain or use complicated metaphors that slow the narrative. Though flash fiction often employs beautiful language, it is also direct. Descriptions must be both concise and vivid. At times this seems difficult, but with intentional revision, a writer can include fewer details that contain the same potency and momentum as a longer story.
One way to achieve directness, potency, and momentum in a flash story is by knowing your characters and introducing them with well-chosen sensory details. Let’s look at a passage from one of my own stories, “Our Sky, the Ocean,” which now appears in The Glass City.
The narrator introduces her sister through action, after which you find limited description. Leveraging a single detail—eye color—characterization for both sisters deepens and the larger theme is brought in, which further emphasizes the tone of the story. While any detail may have been used here, the simple description of her sister’s eyes presented a dynamic relationship, the overall theme, and an emotional tone.
She examined me with her wide eyes. They were the same brown as our kitchen table, which Dad had stained extra dark, only they had flecks of gold at the edges. I wished I had her eyes. Mine were light blue like the sky on a day with no chance of rain.
Instead of only stating that Em had brown eyes or, conversely, explaining everything about Em, I used one color and made it specific to lead to other details. The color of Em’s eyes is not only brown but the same color as a table their father had stained, extra dark and with flecks of gold. Not only does this detail offer insight into the girls’ father’s character, but it also highlights the narrator’s slight envy, as she aligns her own eyes with the drought: “Mine were light blue like the sky on a day with no chance of rain.” This detail offers contrast, emotional resonance, and it ties to the larger story.
When it comes to revising flash fiction, every detail is an opportunity to go deeper.
One way to know how and where to include certain details or compress your language is to get to know your characters better. As a writer, knowing your characters intimately allows you to better introduce them to the reader. This may mean jotting down details about them that you won’t necessarily bring up in the story. Let’s try a simple exercise.
Exercise:
- Choose a key description (physical detail) about one of your characters.
- Choose a key emotional detail that is important to the story.
- Write a few sentences that tie together the emotion and physical detail.
Take your time with this exercise and consider trying it out a few times with different characters. As you learn to allow a few sentences to achieve multiple things in your story, you are well on your way to writing an emotionally powerful story.
The art of achieving brevity can also come in handy at the sentence level. As you revise flash fiction, you have the luxury of really diving into each sentence. I always recommend going one sentence at a time and when you feel the sentence couldn’t be tighter, moving forward.
Let’s look at an example of how to employ compression by evaluating the last paragraph of “Our Sky, the Ocean.” This passage could have easily been written in language that was less efficient and less rhythmic if I were to try to explain more about what was happening. The scene basically depicts two characters’ actions, the start of rain that the characters had long been waiting for, and a final moment of peace. Though I don’t have an earlier version of the story available, let’s say it went something like this:
The first drop of rain hit my arm and made all the little hairs stand up. The next drop landed on my cheek. I couldn’t believe the rain was finally here. I looked over at my sister. She still wasn’t talking, but I went with it. I leaned back. So did my sister. We both closed our eyes, and I listened to the world as it continued to rain. I was content, and I hoped she was, too.
As writers, we can easily overthink the limitations of narration. I could have rationalized that because our narrator wasn’t inside the sister’s head, she couldn’t know whether she was feeling the same or listening. I could have told myself that I needed to remind readers of the drought by including the line “I couldn’t believe the rain was finally here.” Instead, I made the artistic choice to have our narrator portray the emotional resonance of the scene, which allowed for more efficient language.
The first drop of rain hit my arm and made all the little hairs stand up. The next drop landed on my cheek. My sister and I leaned back and closed our eyes, listening to the world, absorbing each drop.
When it comes to the efficiency of language, you’ll find that a deeper understanding of emotional resonance helps you to plan what to include/exclude. You can begin to write or revise with economy in mind naturally, but often compression takes place in the revision stage.
Exercise:
Take your time and see each sentence as a vehicle to move you forward. Go through your work one sentence at a time. If a sentence feels potent, turn it blue. If it feels flat or wordy, think about how you can revise it. Keep going until your entire manuscript is blue!
In Summary
Your work as a flash fiction writer is to create powerful sentences that entertain and immerse your readers in a few minutes of their time. This might seem like a tall ask, but it’s accessible if you know your characters intimately. Writing concisely is greatly helped by revising with attention to how each sentence is moving the story forward and allowing details to reveal more about the theme or characters.
Remember to take your time to decide what details to include, and this will allow you to better identify opportunities to connect emotionally with your reader. Look for opportunities to inject symbolism into your sentences or add dynamism to the characters. Compression and brevity, once employed, allow flash fiction to have the emotional resonance of poetry with the immersive momentum of a good short story.
About the Author
JEN KNOX is an educator and storyteller who teaches writing, leadership, and meditation. She is the author of We Arrive Uninvited, which won the Steel Toe Books Award, and The Glass City, which won the Press Americana Prize for Prose. Her short fiction and nonfiction can be found in Chicago Tribune, Five South, McSweeney’s Internet Quarterly, The Saturday Evening Post, and more. She was the recipient of CutBank’s Montana Prize in Nonfiction and earned an Honorable Mention for the 2023 Tom Howard/John H. Reid Fiction & Essay Contest. Jen recently received a grant from the Ohio Arts Council to support the completion of a collection of essays on her day jobs from ages fourteen to twenty-two. After teaching writing for over a decade and managing a leadership program at Ohio State University, Jen began to combine meditation techniques, leadership research, and the power of creativity to launch Unleash Creatives, a holistic arts organization in the Midwest.
