Writing flash fiction – a challenge or a chore? – Guest post by Geoff Le Pard…

Flash fiction hones your writing skills. You’d be surprised how much of your other work you discover you can cut once you master the skill.

Capsulizing your thoughts into 50 or a hundred words forces you to reduce your story to its essence. You discover the same skill will teach you to hone your pitches. (In fact, when I taught writing, I required my students to reduce every article they researched to a single sentence and include their summaries with every assignment.)

One tip: Every story has a setup and climax. Write each in a sentence. You’re on your way.

Geoff Le Pard shares his thoughts on the art of flash fiction.

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When I started blogging in 2014 one thing I discovered pretty much immediately was flash fiction. I came to blogging to enhance my writing. Up to then my focus had been predominantly novels and, to a lesser extent, poetry. I tried a few short stories, about 5000 words but, if I had heard of flash fiction I certainly hadn’t given it any thought.

To begin with I thought it gimmicky. How can you write a story in so few words? I knew of Hemmingway’s famous (though maybe apocryphal) 6 word story: ‘For sale, baby shoes, never worn’. Which was very clever and all that, but surely there couldn’t be a meaningful structure that could constitute the super short story?

Still, I mused, if so many were trying it, where was the harm? After all, one of my personal challenges is…

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