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Friday, September 16, 2011

New Genre: Flash Fiction

Flash Fiction is a term that has been bouncing around the literary world since the Internet really took hold.  If you aren't aware of this emerging genre, I suggest you read this article about writing flash fiction that begins:
With the advent of the Internet, editors are looking for shorter works, more easily read on a computer screen. The current term is "flash fiction", a tale between 300-1000 words long. Longer than micro-fiction (10-300 words) but shorter than traditional short stories (3000-5000 words preferred by most magazines), flash fiction is usually a story of a single act, sometimes the culmination of several unwritten events.
Flash fiction is really becoming a legitimate force in the short fiction world.  It got mainstream attention with the 6 word memoirs phenomenon which has resulted in multiple books and the NPR 3 minute fiction contest (now on its 7th round) which is always judged by an acclaimed author.

It has even spawned a few side genres such as the cell phone novel and the Twitter novel.

There are multiple web based literary journals that support professional flash fiction writers.  One I would like to highlight today is Leodegraunce:
Jolie du Pre is so in love with flash fiction that she founded Leodegraunce, a site that showcases quality flash fiction of up to 200 words. A good story packed into 200 words or less gets right to the heart of the matter and is an exercise in writing tight. We hope to attract excellent authors of flash fiction to Leodegraunce as well as a long list of devoted readers.
They post flash fiction, a story at a time, for 1 week each. Jolie also interviews each author.  How do I know this?  Well, the BPL's very own Shaynie Klein's flash fiction story was just purchased and published by Leodegraunce.  Click here for the story and here for Shaynie's interview.  But hurry, it is only up for a few more days.  And congrats Shaynie!

Leodegraunce is also planning a book for 2012.  I'll keep you posted.

In the meantime, here is a list of links from Shaynie about Flash Fiction.

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