Flash fiction is a brief fictional narrative that still offers character and plot development. Identified varieties, many of them defined by

word count The word count is the number of words in a document or passage of text. Word counting may be needed when a text is required to stay within certain numbers of words. This may particularly be the case in academia, legal proceedings, journalism and ad ...

, include the six-word story; the 280-character story (also known as "

twitterature Twitterature (a portmanteau of ''Twitter'' and ''literature'') is a literary use of the microblogging service of Twitter, X (formerly known as Twitter). It includes various genres, including aphorisms, poetry, and fiction (or some combination ther ...

"); the "dribble" (also known as the " minisaga", 50 words); the "

drabble A drabble is a short work of fiction of precisely one hundred words in length."Winner ...

" (also known as "microfiction", 100 words); "sudden fiction" (up to 750 words); "flash fiction" (up to 1,000 words); and "microstory".

Christopher Kasparek Christopher Kasparek (born 1945) is a Scottish-born writer of Polish descent who has translated works by numerous Polish authors, including Ignacy Krasicki, Bolesław Prus, Florian Znaniecki, Władysław Tatarkiewicz, Marian Rejewski, and Wł ...

, "Two Micro-Stories by

Bolesław Prus Aleksander Głowacki (20 August 1847 – 19 May 1912), better known by his pen name Bolesław Prus (), was a Polish journalist, novelist, a leading figure in the history of Polish literature and philosophy, and a distinctive voice in world ...

", ''

The Polish Review ''The Polish Review'' is an English-language academic journal published quarterly in New York City by the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America. ''The Polish Review'' was established in 1956, as a successor of the ''PAU Bulletin''. It ...

'', 1995, no. 1, pp. 99-103. Some commentators have suggested that flash fiction possesses a unique literary quality in its ability to hint at or imply a larger story.

History

Flash fiction has roots going back to prehistory, recorded at origin of writing, including

fable Fable is a literary genre defined as a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized, and that illustrates or leads to a parti ...

s and

parable A parable is a succinct, didactic story, in prose or verse, that illustrates one or more instructive lessons or principles. It differs from a fable in that fables employ animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature as characters, whe ...

s, notably ''

Aesop's Fables Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a Slavery in ancient Greece, slave and storyteller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 Before the Common Era, BCE. Of varied and unclear origins, the stor ...

'' in the west, and

Panchatantra The ''Panchatantra'' ( IAST: Pañcatantra, ISO: Pañcatantra, , "Five Treatises") is an ancient Indian collection of interrelated animal fables in Sanskrit verse and prose, arranged within a frame story.

and

Jataka tales The ''Jātaka'' (Sanskrit for "Birth-Related" or "Birth Stories") are a voluminous body of literature native to the Indian subcontinent which mainly concern the previous births of Gautama Buddha in both human and animal form. Jataka stories we ...

in India. Later examples include the tales of

Nasreddin Nasreddin () or Nasreddin Hodja (variants include Mullah Nasreddin Hodja, Nasruddin Hodja, Mullah Nasruddin, Mullah Nasriddin, Khoja Nasriddin, Khaja Nasruddin) (1208–1285) is a character commonly found in the folklores of the Muslim world, ...

, and

Zen Zen (; from Chinese: ''Chán''; in Korean: ''Sŏn'', and Vietnamese: ''Thiền'') is a Mahayana Buddhist tradition that developed in China during the Tang dynasty by blending Indian Mahayana Buddhism, particularly Yogacara and Madhyamaka phil ...

koan A ( ; ; zh, c=公案, p=gōng'àn ; ; ) is a story, dialogue, question, or statement from Chinese Chan Buddhist lore, supplemented with commentaries, that is used in Zen Buddhist practice in different ways. The main goal of practice in Z ...

s such as ''

The Gateless Gate ''The Gateless Barrier'' (Mandarin: 無門關 ''Wúménguān''; Japanese: 無門関 ''Mumonkan''), sometimes translated as ''The Gateless Gate'', is a collection of 48 Chan (Zen) koans compiled in the early 13th century by the Chinese Zen mast ...

''. In the United States, early forms of flash fiction can be found in the 19th century, notably in the figures of

Walt Whitman Walter Whitman Jr. (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, and journalist; he also wrote two novels. He is considered one of the most influential poets in American literature and world literature. Whitman incor ...

Ambrose Bierce Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24, 1842 – ) was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and American Civil War veteran. His book '' The Devil's Dictionary'' was named one of "The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature" by the ...

, and

Kate Chopin Kate Chopin (, also ; born Katherine O'Flaherty; February 8, 1850 – August 22, 1904) was an American author of short stories and novels based in Louisiana. She is considered by scholars to have been a forerunner of American 20th-century feminis ...

. In the 1920s, flash fiction was referred to as the "short short story" and was associated with ''

Cosmopolitan Cosmopolitan may refer to: Internationalism * World citizen, one who eschews traditional geopolitical divisions derived from national citizenship * Cosmopolitanism, the idea that all of humanity belongs to a single moral community * Cosmopolitan ...

'' magazine, and in the 1930s, collected in anthologies such as ''The American Short Short Story''.

Somerset Maugham William Somerset Maugham ( ; 25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was an English writer, known for his plays, novels and short stories. Born in Paris, where he spent his first ten years, Maugham was schooled in England and went to a German un ...

was a notable proponent, with his ''Cosmopolitans: Very Short Stories'' (1936) being an early collection. In Japan, flash fiction was popularized in the post-war period particularly by . In 1986, Jerome Stern at the Florida State University organized the World's Best Short-Short Story Contest for stories of fewer than 250 words. Michael Martone, the first winner, received $100 and a crate of Florida oranges as the prize. The ''Southeast Review'' continues the contest but has increased the maximum to 500 words. In 1996, Stern published ''Micro Fiction: an anthology of really short stories'' drawn, in part, from the contest. It was not until 1992, however, that the term "flash fiction" came into use as a category/genre of fiction. It was coined by James Thomas, who together with Denise Thomas and Tom Hazuka edited the 1992 landmark anthology titled ''Flash Fiction: 72 Very Short Stories'', and was introduced by Thomas in his Introduction to that volume. Since then the term has gained wide acceptance as a form, especially in the W. W. Norton Anthologies co-edited by Thomas: ''Flash Fiction America'', ''Flash Fiction International'', ''Flash Fiction Forward'', and ''Flash Fiction: 72 Very Short Stories''. In 2020, the

Harry Ransom Center The Harry Ransom Center, known as the Humanities Research Center until 1983, is an archive, library, and museum at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts from the Americas and Europe ...

at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...

established the first curated collection of flash fiction artifacts in the United States.

Authors

Practitioners have included Saadi of Shiraz ("

Gulistan of Sa'di ''Gulistān'' (; ), sometimes spelled Golestan, is a landmark of Persian literature, perhaps its single most influential work of prose. Written in 1258 CE, it is one of two major works of the Persian poet Sa'di, considered one of the greatest ...

"),

Anton Chekhov Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; ; 29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer, widely considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his b ...

, O. Henry,

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a novelist and writer from Prague who was Jewish, Austrian, and Czech and wrote in German. He is widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of Litera ...

H. P. Lovecraft Howard Phillips Lovecraft (, ; August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American writer of Weird fiction, weird, Science fiction, science, fantasy, and horror fiction. He is best known for his creation of the Cthulhu Mythos. Born in Provi ...

Yasunari Kawabata was a Japanese novelist and short story writer whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the 1968 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first Japanese author to receive the award. His works have enjoyed broad international appeal and ...

Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway ( ; July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Known for an economical, understated style that influenced later 20th-century writers, he has been romanticized fo ...

Julio Cortázar Julio Florencio Cortázar (26 August 1914 – 12 February 1984; ) was an Argentine and naturalised French novelist, short story writer, poet, essayist, and translator. Known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, Cortázar influenc ...

Daniil Kharms Daniil Ivanovich Kharms (; – 2 February 1942) was a Russian avant-gardist and absurdist poet, writer and dramatist in the early Soviet era. Early years Kharms was born as Daniil Yuvachev in Saint Petersburg, then the capital of the Ru ...

, Arthur C. Clarke,

Richard Brautigan Richard Gary Brautigan (January 30, 1935) was an American novelist, poet, and short story writer. He wrote throughout his life and published ten novels, two collections of short stories, and four books of poetry. Brautigan's work has been publi ...

Ray Bradbury Ray Douglas Bradbury ( ; August 22, 1920June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, Horror fiction, horr ...

, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.,

Fredric Brown Fredric Brown (October 29, 1906 – March 11, 1972) was an American science fiction, fantasy, and mystery writer.D. J. McReynolds, "The Short Fiction of Fredric Brown" in Frank N. Magill, (ed.) ''Survey of Science Fiction Literature'', Vol. ...

John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and Extended technique, non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one ...

, Philip K. Dick, and

Robert Sheckley Robert Sheckley (July 16, 1928 – December 9, 2005) was an American writer. First published in the science-fiction magazines of the 1950s, his many quick-witted stories and novels were famously unpredictable, Absurdist fiction, absurdist, and ...

. Hemingway also wrote 18 pieces of flash fiction that were included in his first short-story collection, ''

In Our Time In Our Time may refer to: * ''In Our Time'' (1944 film), a film starring Ida Lupino and Paul Henreid * ''In Our Time'' (1982 film), a Taiwanese anthology film featuring director Edward Yang; considered the beginning of the "New Taiwan Cinema" * ''In ...

'' (1925). While it is often alleged that (to win a bet) he also wrote the flash fiction " For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn", various iterations of the story date back to 1906, when Hemingway was only 7 years old, rendering his authorship implausible. Also notable are the 62 "short-shorts" which comprise ''Severance,'' the thematic collection by

Robert Olen Butler Robert Olen Butler (born January 20, 1945) is an American fiction writer. His short-story collection '' A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain'' was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1993. Early life Butler was born in Granite City, Illin ...

in which each story describes the remaining 90 seconds of conscious awareness within human heads which have been decapitated. Contemporary English-speaking writers well known for their published flash fiction include

Lydia Davis Lydia Davis (born July 15, 1947) is an American short story writer, novelist, essayist, and translator from French and other languages, who often writes very short stories. Davis has produced several new translations of French literary classics ...

, David Gaffney, Robert Scotellaro, and Nancy Stohlman, Sherrie Flick, Bruce Holland Rogers,

Steve Almond Steve Almond (born October 27, 1966) is an American short-story writer, essayist, and author of fifteen books, four of which are self-published. Life Steve Almond was born on October 27, 1966, in California. Almond was raised in Palo Alto, Ca ...

, Barbara Henning, Grant Faulkner. Spanish-speaking literature has many authors of microstories, including Augusto Monterroso (" El Dinosaurio") and Luis Felipe Lomelí (" El Emigrante"). Their microstories are some of the shortest ever written in that language. In Spain, authors of ''microrrelatos'' (very short fictions) have included Andrés Neuman,

Ramón Gómez de la Serna Ramón Gómez de la Serna y Puig (July 3, 1888 – January 13, 1963), born in Madrid, was a Spanish writer, dramatist and avant-garde agitator. He strongly influenced surrealist film maker Luis Buñuel. Ramón Gómez de la Serna was especially ...

, José Jiménez Lozano, Javier Tomeo,

José María Merino José María Merino is a Spanish novelist born in A Coruña, Galicia on 5 March 1941. He is the father of two daughters, María and Ana, both of them university professors. ( Ana Merino is also a poet.) He lived for several years in León and ...

Juan José Millás Juan José Millás (born 1946) is a Spanish writer and winner of the 1990 Premio Nadal. He was born in Valencia, Spain, Valencia and has spent most of his life in Madrid, Spain, Madrid, where he studied philosophy and literature at the Universida ...

, and

Óscar Esquivias Óscar Esquivias (born 28 June 1972 in Burgos, Castile and León, Spain) is a Spanish short-story writer, poet and novelist. Biography He studied at the University of Burgos. He was director of the literature magazine ''Calamar, revista de crea ...

. In his collection ''La mitad del diablo'' (Páginas de Espuma, 2006), Juan Pedro Aparicio included the one-word story Luis XIV, which in its entirety reads: "Yo" ("I"). In Argentina, notable contemporary contributors to the genre have included Marco Denevi, Luisa Valenzuela, and Ana María Shua. The Italian writer

Italo Calvino Italo Calvino (, ; ;. RAI (circa 1970), retrieved 25 October 2012. 15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985) was an Italian novelist and short story writer. His best-known works include the ''Our Ancestors'' trilogy (1952–1959), the '' Cosm ...

consciously searched for a short narrative form, drawing inspiration from Argentine writers

Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo ( ; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish literature, Spanish-language and international literatur ...

and

Adolfo Bioy Casares Adolfo Bioy Casares (; 15 September 1914 – 8 March 1999) was an Argentine fiction writer, journalist, diarist, and translator. He was a friend and frequent collaborator with his fellow countryman Jorge Luis Borges. He is the author of the Fa ...

and finding that Monterroso's was "the most perfect he could find"; "El dinosaurio", in turn, possibly inspired his "The Dinosaurs". German-language authors of ''Kürzestgeschichten,'' influenced by brief narratives penned by

Bertolt Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...

and

, have included Peter Bichsel, Heimito von Doderer, Günter Kunert, and Helmut Heißenbüttel. The

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

-speaking world has produced a number of microstory authors, including the

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; ; ) are awards administered by the Nobel Foundation and granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind". The prizes were first awarded in 1901, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred N ...

-winning Egyptian author

Naguib Mahfouz Naguib Mahfouz Abdelaziz Ibrahim Ahmed Al-Basha (, ; 11 December 1911 – 30 August 2006) was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature. In awarding the prize, the Swedish Academy described him as a writer "who, through wo ...

, whose book ''Echoes of an Autobiography'' is composed mainly of such stories. Other flash fiction writers in Arabic include Zakaria Tamer, Haidar Haidar, and Laila al-Othman. In the Russian-speaking world, the best known flash fiction author is

Linor Goralik Linor Goralik (, born Yuliya Borisovna Goralik, on 9 July 1975) is an Israeli author, poet, artist, essayist and marketing specialist. Biography Early years and family She was born on 9 July 1975 in a Jewish family in Dnipropetrovsk, in t ...

. In the southwestern

Indian state India is a federal union comprising 28 states and 8 union territories, for a total of 36 subnational entities. The states and union territories are further subdivided into 800 districts and smaller administrative divisions by the respe ...

, of

Kerala Kerala ( , ) is a States and union territories of India, state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile ...

P. K. Parakkadavu is known for his many microstories in the

Malayalam language Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry ( Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 22 scheduled languages of India. Malayalam wa ...

. Hungarian writer István Örkény is known (beside other works) for his ''One-Minute Stories.''

Journals

Print

A number of print journals dedicate themselves to flash fiction. These include ''Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine''.

Online

Access to the Internet has enhanced an awareness of flash fiction, with online journals being devoted entirely to the style. In a CNN article on the subject, the author remarked that the "democratization of communication offered by the Internet has made positive in-roads" in the specific area of flash fiction, and directly influenced the style's popularity. The form is popular, with most online literary journals now publishing flash fiction. In summer 2017, ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

'' began running a series of flash fiction stories online every summer.

Notes

Bibliography

, "Two Micro-Stories by

", ''

'', 1995, no. 1, pp. 99–103. * Zygmunt Szweykowski, ''Twórczość Bolesława Prusa'' (The Art of

), 2nd ed., Warsaw,

Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy The State Publishing Institute PIW () is a Polish publishing house founded in Warsaw by the Polish state after World War II, in 1946. ''PIW'' specializes in literature, history, philosophy, and the social sciences. One of its more popular liter ...

, 1972.

External links

* {{Authority control Fiction forms Short story types Flash Fiction awards Literary terminology no:Lynfiksjon

History

Authors

Journals

Print

Online

See also

Notes

Bibliography

External links