I’ve been intrigued by flash fiction since reading an interview with Shelby van Pelt, author of the lovely novel Remarkably Bright Creatures. By flash fiction, I mean stories ranging from 6 words to 1,000. Usually around 500. Van Pelt spoke of how important writing flash fiction had been in sparking her creativity. As I’ve begun working on a new novel, I’ve been thinking about how I might use flash fiction for my own purposes. How can novelists use flash fiction?
To answer that question, I read through Guilty Crime Story Magazine’s website. (GUILTY is a print magazine, but on their website, they focus on flash crime fiction.) Spend an hour reading through their site and you get a pretty good sense of what it’s all about. This is what I learned.
1. Flash Fiction can help you zoom in on a moment.
One of the things I especially liked about Remarkably Bright Creatures was that it popped with special moments. Yes, if you’re writing a mystery, you’re probably going to focus on murder scenes. But what if you decide to look at a moment when your killer gets into an argument with his dentist? Maybe he’s very sensitive to pain. Maybe it’s important to the novel or maybe not. Maybe it just winds up being a transitional scene. But it’s a moment you hadn’t thought of before. You can explore it in 500 words and maybe you’ll surprise yourself.
2. Flash fiction can get you past writer’s block
Say you’ve been stuck on page 133 for a month. Terrible feeling. You don’t know where the novel’s going. But you have an idea for a little story about the protagonist witnessing an argument between two neighbors when he was ten. Doesn’t have anything to do with the novel, but that’s okay. It gives you a chance to spend time with the protagonist. There’s no pressure. Write it or don’t write it. No one cares. Write ten of them. Sooner or later you might find yourself moving past page 133.
3. Flash fiction allows you to experiment.
Flash fiction doesn’t usually follow the rules of the narrative arc. There tends to be little set up. A lot is implied. The reader is expected to work some stuff out by herself. So if you want to write something from the point of view of a pencil, now would be the moment. Or tell a story backwards. Or just do whatever you want, as long as it’s entertaining. The important thing is, you’re writing.
What do you think? Have you ever written a flash fiction?
SUSAN BREEN is the award-winning author of The Fiction Class and the Maggie Dove mystery series. She is the 2024 winner of the Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competition. Her new novel, MERRY, is forthcoming from Alcove Press in Fall 2025.
My first flash fiction inspired a full-length thriller–exactly the kind of experiment outlined above.
Susan, this excellent post made me think about all the other ways flash fiction can benefit our writing.
That’s amazing! Thank you, Lori!
I was so happy to see this post, Susan! I’ve been having a lot of fun with flash fiction for the exact reasons you list. I’ve always heard the advice to experiment with short stories to improve as a writer, but I really struggle with short mysteries. I sometimes find it hard to fit a whole mystery and story arc into a novel, so I feel utterly incapable of pulling it off in 2000 words. Flash fiction has the advantages of a short story in that it feels lower stakes, yet it’s less narratively demanding. If I mess up and the whole thing never sees the light of day, that’s fine. At least I didn’t spend a year of my life on it. That takes the pressure off, yet still gets me to work on conflict and character development or lets me experiment with point of view.
Thanks for introducing me to Guilty, by the way. I know what I’ll be reading later today.
Thanks so much for your response, Kate. I’m glad you brought up short stories because they are a whole other situation. Have fun with GUILTY!
I love your idea of using flash fiction to zoom in on a moment in a character’s life. What a great, playful way to brainstorm what makes a new character tick: Have something go wrong in their day and see how they react…in 500 words or less.
Thank you, Mally. Thinking about it in terms of zooming really helped me.
I think that’s what I do every week at my writing circle. I only have 45 minutes and I try to fit an entire scene or story into that time. It really helps to look at parts of my longer story and I almost always end up adding whatever short bit I wrote into the longer piece
I’ve used short stories to explore characters or events but never flash fiction. It’s a great idea, though, and I’ll give it a go when I start the next Corelli.
The only time I’ve written flash fiction was for the annual contest for Crime Bake. I hadn’t thought of it as a way to get over a writing block. Thanks, great ideas here, Susan!
I love the possibility of coming up with memorable moments in a book through this technique.
Susan, that’s a great way to zero in on a scene that needs fleshing out. Thanks for the challenge!
Susan, It’s a great exercise and it can make you focus on the heart of what you want to say. I’ve written several flash fiction pieces that have been published.
It’s really fun.
Cathi Stoler