Recently I’ve been taking another look at the remarkable work of Diane Williams. Her work was originally called ‘sudden fiction.’ Then we started calling such stories ‘short shorts’ or ‘micro-fiction.’ Somewhere along the line, these stories were labeled ‘flash fiction’ and that category title has stuck.
It is tempting to define flash fiction primarily in terms of word length but that is entirely misleading. Yet most are characterized by a severe compression in their construction, so that the reader is placed precariously on a knife edge throughout the reading.
Often some beautiful elements of the story told in long form are present but flash almost always requires that we eliminate many, if not most, of those. In the longer form, such grace notes provide a pause, a chance to take a breath, digest plot point or revelation. Flash wants us to experience such without hesitation, in one gulp.
Flash wants us to experience such without hesitation, in one gulp.
In flash stories, even some important complicating elements to a plot point may be left unexamined. Or even an important complication may be eliminated altogether, only apparent by deduction or the suspicion of the reader. The reader may have to simply ‘fill in’ with their imagination what has actually happened.
Why would a writer be so unclear? One reason may be that in flash, the writer is giving the reader the opportunity to experience the contradictory/confusing/paradoxical aspect of a human experience. Information, feelings, potential consequences all come to a person’s attention in quite rapid succession, propelling an action or decision. In a sense this experience is, in total, non-dual in nature because at the beginning of it coming upon one, the elements are not divided into ‘pros v cons’ or ‘right v wrong,’ or even ‘right v left.’
Flash stories present many challenges. Not least of them is to provide the experience to the reader of a present moment that is a lot more complicated, more entertwined, than it seems prior to reflection, prior to the spiritual pause.
More like a camera flash than slo-mo film.