Whether humorous or sad, this writing should not give the impression of permanence. The self-containment of flash is incomplete, an exercise in virtuosity that tightens the circle of mystery surrounding what we know, or what we think we know; narrative perspective shifts; quick moves in opposite directions, dialectical moves and then leap to a radical resolution that leaves the reader anxious in a particularly satisfying way; language and metaphysics grapple for holds; highly dramatic prose.
It is short and delivers an impact that is significant and lasting; experimental and exquisitely calibrated; highly compressed and highly charged; dramatize experience and evoke emotion in the smallest, tightest spaces.
Voice is everything; honors reduction and refuses to ramble; it covers years in less time, time in almost no time; it wants to deliver us where we were before we began; needs to be convincing and unpredictable; brief and bright; contains a certain spiritual lightness; it needs to ship, bind, gel, crystallize, rise, or ferment; can be ‘tone’ piece; can use dreams as metaphor or as comment on physical reality; snapper at the end; a twist that is shocking or touching, but must be unexpected; to write flash fiction is to express from a situation in the exterior or interior world the life-giving drop-sweat, tear, semen, saliva-that will spread an intensity on the page, burn a hole in it.
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