There are several reasons writers might start writing flash fiction.
#Story writing challenge how to
One of our 100 Flash Fiction Prompts was actually taken from the movie Pulp Fiction! How to write very short flash fiction Just carefully pick out those little moments, write down what’s happening as a one or two sentence plot, and then use it to inspire your own, completely original flash fiction story.
#Story writing challenge full
A full length feature film might have as many as 20 little incidents in it that could easily be flash fiction.ĭon’t directly write a story based on the film, though.
#Story writing challenge tv
If you’re ever stuck for ideas, you can find little stories within the story in books, movies, and TV shows. This brings us to our top tip for coming up with ideas for flash fiction stories: Just look for little stories within the story, like the lifeboat moment in our hypothetical tale of the sinking ship. If you have a plot in mind, but it seems more suitable for a longer story, you can sometimes find several flash fiction plots hidden within it. Not all flash fiction will have a plot quite this dramatic, but all great flash fiction will have a plot that can be expressed in just one or two sentences. This is an appropriate plot for flash fiction because it’s simple, high-stakes, dramatic, and thought provoking. Two characters must decide which one of them will take the last seat on the last lifeboat. We’ve chosen the lifeboat situation as the key moment in this hypothetical story. You don’t have time to tell the entire story of a sinking ship, but you can turn one moment into a story. In a longer short story you do have time to bring in some kind of satisfying resolution at the end.īut, if you’re writing flash fiction and your story is only a few hundred words, you really need to zoom in on one tiny moment in that story. Perhaps your climax would be the two main characters having to decide who will take the remaining seat on the last lifeboat.įinally, you need a resolution. So, you would find the most dramatic moment in the story and build up to it. You haven’t got time to introduce the characters before the action begins, so you’d need to feed in exposition and backstory here and there during the events.Īll stories need a good climax. So, to turn the same story from novel to short story, you’d probably want to begin with the ship sinking. The golden rule of writing short stories is to begin as close to end as you can. You’d use the first part of the novel to introduce your characters and describe the voyage leading up to the sinking and the sinking of the ship would be the dramatic climax, leaving the last part of the book as the resolution. Of course, there are infinite ways to write a novel about a sinking ship, but this would structurally be the most obvious. If you were writing a novel about a sinking ship, you’d probably want the actual sinking to be the climax of the story. Two people on a sinking ship must decide who should take the last seat in the last lifeboat. A typical flash fiction plot is like looking at one part of a story under a microscope.įor example, let’s look at prompt #21 in our list of 100 Flash Fiction Prompts: 21. You cannot simply use a short story plot and tell it using fewer words.
When you sit down to write flash fiction, you must begin by choosing an appropriate plot. Cut out everything superfluous and really make sure each and every word is performing an important function in the story. If you’re interested in writing very short fiction, why not check out drabbles? Drabbles are stories of exactly 100 words in length, and they can be a great way to practice keeping your stories very, very short. When writing flash, you’ll need to use fewer characters, a simpler plot, and you’ll have to make each word count. Just like the short story is a different animal to the novel or novella flash fiction is kind of unique. However, this scarcity of words means that writing flash fiction can feel like a completely new skill. The only difference between flash fiction and a typical short story is the word count. What’s the difference between flash fiction and a short story?
Great flash fiction is succinct, emotive, thought-provoking, and impactful. The beauty (and difficulty) of writing flash fiction lies in trying to tell a complete story in so few words. Flash Fiction is defined as a very short story that can be anywhere from just a couple of words to about a thousand in length.
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