5 Ways Flash Fiction Enriches My Writing

And introducing my Flash Fiction Friday

Photo by roya ann miller on Unsplash

One of the priceless benefits of my writing cohort is receiving mentor feedback on monthly submissions. The limit is 1,000 words. Early on, I appreciated working through a couple of scenes from my in-progress novel. But I concluded that being able to review one complete story, in all its context, would be the best way to squeeze every drop from the feedback process.

So I challenged myself to write six self-contained 1,000 word stories. Flash fiction, for those who don’t know. I was not a flash fiction writer one year ago. (I’m barely one now.) In fact, I was rather oblivious to the genre. With the six stories I set out to write finally complete, I’m reflecting on my learning experience and looking forward to writing more flash fiction.

Beginning with my first piece (read it here), those stories will be posted here to Substack every other Friday for what I cannot help calling “Flash Fiction Friday.”  (I will alliterate anything and everything permissible.)

If you’re a curious writer, read on for just a few ways that writing flash fiction enriches my writing process.

1. Character heartbeats are more palpable.

Writers, with regard to our writing approaches, are often categorized as “plotters” or “pantsers.” Plotters, by nature or by discipline, plot. Pantsers fly by the seat of their pants. 

Ya girl is a pantser. Though I do eventually get to outlining with paper and pen to carve out distinct points, I relish discovering my characters and who they are in the middle of writing them. Sometimes it takes a little extra soul searching for them to really take on their own lives and personalities. Zooming in on their deepest wishes through the lens of flash fiction can get them moving a lot faster. 

While I work through my novel (in a very non-linear fashion), I want to give more life to the secondary characters—even if only in my head—and explore why they interact with my main peeps the way they do. So I wrote all six of my flash fiction pieces for that purpose. Meeting my characters through these origin stories sheds light on their formative moments, adding color and texture to their relationships in the novel.

2. Depth and vibrancy are practiced in the craft.

This is a double-win category because it’s where we adamantly apply our rule that “writers must be readers.” We can scrape through posts, podcasts, and periodicals for the how-to of any fiction. But those are just the bones. We learn best by seeing the stories in their flesh, the breath of their creators pulsing through. As such, observing the shapes and feeling the movements of well-written shorter stories informs and animates my own writing.

It's also easier to train our storytelling muscles within the flash fiction genre. The long and short of it is that it’s more daunting to hone our craft in 50,000-100,000 words than it is to work within 1,000-1,500 word guardrails. The word limit forces me to boil my stories until the richness is pulled to the surface, allowing me to carefully discard or reappropriate the rest of the words.

3. The point of my red pen is sharper.

“The short story requires more drastic procedures than the novel because more has to be accomplished in less space.”  - Queen Flannery*

Drastic procedures. The inner drama is a full-on brawl when I’m slashing paragraphs that feel like ev*er*y*thing, forcing single sentences to work harder and demanding more of my verbs. My first attempt at flash fiction was well over 3,000 words when I completed the first draft. The editing process was brutal, but the refinement in my self-editing was clear when my sixth story was just kissing 1,500 words at the end of the first draft and edited down to under 1,000 in just a couple of sittings. Understanding the large work that has to be done in less space makes a more keen editing eye.

4. There are accomplishments to celebrate for time invested.

If we average 2-4 drafts of a piece before we consider it complete, there is a lot of distance between today and the finish line of an entire book. I don’t know about you, but I sure need some wins for momentum’s sake. Writing shorter stories and seeing them to completion is an accomplishment that encourages me to keep on stealing writing time wherever I can! 

5. Friends can be found in characters and their creators.

In the modestly epic song* “The Story,” Brandi Carlile sings:

All of these lines across my face

Tell you the story of who I am

So many stories of where I’ve been

And how I’ve got to where I am

Oh, but these stories don’t mean anything

When you’ve got no one to tell them to, it’s true

I was made for you

The song is about the stories of a well-weathered life having meaning when we have someone to share them with. I think about art the same way. It has its own individual meaning to its creator, to be sure. But our art intimates another magnitude of meaning when it’s experienced by others.

This has become real to me through sharing my work with friends. Not only am I simply showing them my writing, but I’m intimately expressing a part of myself with them. Posting my little works of flash fiction here, I expect, will help the stories find friends who will connect in their own ways. I appreciate you being here and reading these extensions of myself. I sure hope we can get to know each other more in this interesting corner of the Internet.

As a thank you for sticking around to read my flash fiction reflections, here are the titles and promises of my first set of flash fiction stories, focusing on characters in my novel: 

01 “Secret Recipe”

02 “Where the Lovelight Gleams” 

03 “Morning by Morning”

04 “Bendable”

05 “Wild and Weary”

06 “Rambler”

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* Notes *

…From Flannery O’Connor’s essay “The Nature and Aim of Fiction,” published in Mystery and Manners (p. 70).

…If you’re like me and appreciate wandering rabbit trails, you can read a little more about “The Story” (written by Phil Hanseroth) and how Brandi Carlile and her bandmates, twin brothers Phil and Tim Hanseroth, approach their storytelling craft together.

…ALSO. Another rabbit trail…The Hanseroth Twins have recently branched out with their own music project. The two songs already released ahead of their July album are, unsurprisingly, beautiful. I vividly see and feel “Broken Homes” and look forward to more from them this summer.