No Intimidation Necessary

Let’s face it, for most people flash fiction stories of one thousand words or less is intimidating. You have to get characters, setting, and plot all in there without any unnecessary words.

How do you do it?

Start with an idea, a glimpse, a piece of a whole. Find the beginning and know the end, and then bring point A to point B.

Your story can be about a character, a setting, or a situation. The setting might not be important, but the people are. Maybe it’s a situation that’s important. It could be that your setting is the shining star in your story. Whatever your story is about, focus on that, then bring the other details in.

Pick a mood. Entice your reader with the four senses. Taste, feel, smell, and hear the emotions in every description, every interaction. Humor can be a connecting force in your piece, as well. Even dark stories need a little levity in the form of irony. And it may get the reader on your character’s side.

Make your words have double meaning for a stronger impact. There’s no time for flowery script, and long descriptions. Brief images, quick action, and snappy dialogue will move your story along. We’re not talking weather here, unless that is the driving force of why your characters are thrown together.

Is there backstory? It should be peppered in using as few words as possible. Let the story reside in the here and now. If your characters knew each other before, a couple of words of remembrance will do. A flicker of recognition or a distinct movement that brings back a memory. Make it powerful and make it matter.

Give it a twist. Reveal something that changes the game after you’ve established the beginning of the story. Tug at the reader’s heartstrings, clench the reader’s gut, grab the reader by their pupils and don’t let them go until the last word of the story is read.

Don’t make it cliché or your readers will roll their eyes and scream bloody murder. Don’t bore your readers, but make your story succinct and exciting. Write the first draft without worrying how many words you’re getting down. Go back and take out unnecessary words, redundant phrases, or adjectives and adverbs. Cut it down until all you have left is the heart of the story. The very essence that creates life, and love, and being. And then practice until you get it right.

No intimidation necessary.

Dawn Ford is Operations Manager at Splickety Publishing Group. She writes YA and fantasy fiction. Dawn shares a blog with eight other Christian women at www.inkspirationalmessages.com. Find her on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/DawnFordAuthor/) and on Twitter (https://twitter.com/Rubytuzdae)