Other than the length of one thousand words or less, how do you describe flash fiction? In the first installment of this essay, I discussed how generalizations about flash are often contradictory. (If you missed part one, read it here.) Part of the beauty of flash is that it resists easy definition. Within that one thousand word limit is an incredible freedom. Of course, this is true of all fiction, but the variety of form in flash is particularly remarkable. Each piece dictates its own rules, creates its own universe. So, then: how do you talk about technique in flash fiction? Discussing the techniques we love best (without making generalizations) can provide inspiration for writers who experiment in the genre, and give longtime readers of flash an outlet for their impressions. Here, I discuss five techniques used in my favorite flash stories. Certainly, there are innumerable others. Share your favorite with us.

The Progression of The Surreal

Authors use the surreal in flash in all sorts of different ways. One thousand words is often the perfect size for an alternate reality. One technique that I’ve been drawn to, in particular, is this: many times, a surreal conceit is introduced at the beginning of the story, and then progresses to its logical end. Here, a complex surreal idea fuels the story.

In “Babies,” Amelia Gray introduces the conceit in the first sentence: “One morning, I woke to discover I had given birth overnight.” The story that follows develops this premise.

In “The Crown,” by Ben Loory, a dishwasher finds an invisible crown in the sink, and the rest of the action is propelled by his reaction to this discovery.

In “The House’s Beating Heart,” Kate Folk takes the reader inside a house that, as the title suggests, has a live, pulsing heart. Of course, the question soon arises: where are the building’s other organs?

Imposed Restraints

Many of the pieces of flash I love best operate under some type of formal restraint (other than the word limit, of course), whether the author consciously imposed it on the story before writing it, or not. I was lucky enough to do an independent study on the short short with my advisor in grad school, and she pointed out to me that most flash doesn’t contain all of the formal “elements of fiction.” Many times, a story will focus on just one. Whether it’s allowing just one element of fiction, or limiting the story to all questions, all answers, or all dialogue—flash often flourishes under further restraints.

I love Jessica Soffer’s “Beginning, End,” a story that that is so moving because it is all plot.

In “The Mountainview Middle School Geography Bee,” James Davis limits his story to the dialogue of the mediator for this zany event.

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“It needs to be longer” used to be a common story critique. However, these days, our editors will sometimes comment that a submission might work better as flash. We’ve said this about experimental stories with a repetitive form, about submissions in which there is simply one interesting, tiny kernel that is enough to carry a story, and about shorter stories that could use some whittling. I’m sure, in the future, we’ll make the same comments about entirely different styles of fiction, too. But maybe, if we may be so bold, we should first answer the question: what makes a flash story succeed?

Flash fiction is being embraced by popular authors from Dave Eggers to Lydia Davis, as well as by esteemed literary publications from Tin House to NANO Fiction. But what is flash fiction, exactly? Other than its length of one thousand words or fewer, how can we characterize the genre?

A better question might be: do we even want to try? It’s impossible to make generalizations about flash fiction and the way it works because, aside from its length, there is really no other description that can even be generally applied to the genre. Statements by authors about flash often contradict each other. In his New York Times essay, Grant Faulkner writes: “Flash communicates via caesuras and crevices. There is no asking more, no premise of comprehensiveness, because flash fiction is a form that privileges excision over agglomeration, adhering more than any other narrative form to Hemingway’s famous iceberg dictum: only show the top 10 percent of your story, and leave the other 90 percent below water to be conjured.” Certainly, there are some pieces of flash that take the iceberg approach to the extreme. However, there are other flash stories that feel complete in themselves; they tell an entire story, and the reader doesn’t feel compelled to fill in the white space, to piece together the larger narrative that the piece implies. In his own essay about flash, Dave Eggers recalls Lydia Davis telling him: “when she begins writing, she’s seeking to answer a question, and if it only takes one paragraph to answer that question, then it seems unnecessary to continue on and on for 8000 words.” For some writers, short shorts are whole, complete worlds. They are answers to questions, not hints at a larger story. For every writer, it seems, flash is an entirely different creature.

In an interview with The Believer, Lydia Davis says: “There is some acceptance of the terms flash fiction, sudden fiction, etc. But I think people may still be expecting a kind of miniature short story when they begin reading a piece of flash fiction, rather than the less usual offering that it might be—meditation, logic game, extended wordplay, diatribe—for which there is no good general name.”

So why even attempt to describe the way that flash fiction works? Because, fortunately, more and more people want to write it. What better way to learn than by looking at the techniques others have used?

In the next installment of this essay, I’ll discuss five techniques used in some of my favorite flash stories. It will by no means be an all-inclusive list, but rather a brief examination of how some writers concoct incredible stories in one thousand words or less.

by Sadye Teiser