The Incredible Superpower of Flash

By Dinty W. Moore

Brevity magazine turned 25 this year, and understandably, I’ve been asked countless times to define “What makes a flash a flash?” or to reveal “How do you fit a full story in 750 words?”

My answers have varied over the years, but they’ve always included two essential concepts: compression and layering.

Here is how they work:

COMPRESSION

Poets know this well. Saying more with less. In flash prose, the challenge is twofold: eliminating unnecessary words and phra...