Creative writing - Mike Sanders 2014

Choosing your topic
Short and sweet flash fiction
Short-form genres

Flash fiction presents a special challenge when you set out to write it. Primarily that’s because of its length limit. A solution, then, is to focus on small subjects and reduction. For example, play some of your favorite songs and write about how the music and lyrics make you feel. Perhaps one will trigger a brief episode from your life you want to write about.

This approach can also be employed visually: look at some photos that are important to you. What makes one important? What were you doing or thinking at the instant you first saw that picture and were moved by it?

Beyond these personal exercises, you might consider your favorite book or movie and then attempt to write out its narrative in 500 words or less. What you end up with often will bear little resemblance to the original and, in fact, may constitute a unique flash fiction story of its own.

As you continue to experiment with writing flash fiction, you’ll discover the techniques that work best for you. As a writer, you now have many of the tools to be successful in both the short story and flash fiction forms.