 Extremely brief (usually < 1,500 words)  Aka short shorts, immediate fiction, microfiction, etc  Still contains all the usual elements of fiction (do you remember the 5 that we discussed yesterday?)  Known affectionately as the “obscure little sister” of the typical short story

 Few characters › Explaining 8 people wastes words  Descriptions that tell show › Maximize impact with vivid scenes  Efficiency of a poet › Big impact in a small package  Clear Vision › Avoid “but what happened then?” at the end

 Be realistic. › A few elements done well can substitute the usual painting of setting / characters  Is every word essential? › No adverbs.  Make a point and drive it home hard. › Leave the reader changed and breathless.  On “needing” change: › When presented with the opportunity to change, deciding not to change counts

“The Paring Knife” by Michael Oppenheimer “Harvey Cedars: 1948” by Paul Lisicky “Humanity Services” by Lou Beach Ernest Hemingway’s famous short story

 “I found a knife under the refrigerator while the woman I love and I were cleaning our house. It was a small paring knife that we lost many years before and had since forgotten about. I showed the knife to the woman I love and she said, “Oh. Where did you find it?” After I told her, she put the knife on the table and then went into the next room and continued to clean. While I cleaned the kitchen floor, I remembered something that happened four years before that explained how the knife had gotten under the refrigerator.

 We had eaten a large dinner and had drunk many glasses of wine. We turned all the lights out, took our clothing off, and went to bed. We thought we would make love, but something happened and we had an argument while making love. We had never experienced such a thing. We both became extremely angry. I said some very hurtful things to the woman I love. She kicked at me in bed and I got out and went into the kitchen. I fumbled for a chair and sat down. I wanted to rest my arms on the table and then rest my head in my arms, but I felt the dirty dishes on the table and they were in the way. I became incensed. I swept everything that was on the table onto the floor. The noise was tremendous, but then the room was very quiet and I suddenly felt sad. I thought I had destroyed everything. I began to cry. The woman I love came into the kitchen and asked if I was all right. I said, “Yes.” She turned the light on and we looked at the kitchen floor. Nothing much was broken, but the floor was very messy. We both laughed and then went back to bed and made love. The next morning we cleaned up the mess, but obviously overlooked the knife.

 I was about to ask the woman I love if she remembered that incident when she came in from the next room and without saying a word, picked up the knife from the table and slid it back under the refrigerator.”  How does this story leave the reader feeling, even though it’s only 3 paragraphs?

 “My mother touches her forehead, throwing her green eyes into shade. Her mouth is pink, her hair blond like wheat. She is tanned. She is the best-looking woman on the beach, only she will never recognize it. She wraps her long body in an aqua sarong and winces, believes her hips are a bell. Even now she is counting, waiting for the camera to flicker shut.

 My father’s arm weights down her shoulder. He is muscular, his stomach flat as a pan. He looks full ahead, pretending he is with my mother, but already he is in Florida, developing new cities, pumping dead mangrove full of sand. He sees himself building, building. He will be healthy. He will have good fortune. And years in the future, after his Army buddies will have grown soft and womanish, all his hard work will pay off: people will remember his name.

 Their shoulders touch. Their pose says: this is how young couples are supposed to look—see, aren’t we the lucky ones? But my mother’s head is tilted. What is she looking at? Is she gazing at the tennis player by the outdoor shower, the one with the gentle hands, the one who will teach her to unlearn things? Or can she already hear the gun which my father will press into his forehead, twenty years away?”  What’s the change in this, how does the reader feel after, again, 3 paragraphs?

 “Humanity Services came around today. They checked on the size of our bed, the quantity of cans in the pantry, the amount of stretch in your panties. I wasn’t home at the time, it was my shift at The Mill, and you were at work, but Angie let them in. They inspected her hair and teeth, measured Buddy’s dog-house. Angie said they were polite. She offered them a glass of water but after testing our faucet, they declined.”

 For sale: baby shoes, never worn.  Consider: › What does a story need to be a story? › What questions are you left with after this one? › What do you think is happening underneath the words? › Is the amount of writing unsettling? Capturing? Annoying?

 In flash fiction, the reader and the author are sharing a small, intimate space. › Be sure that you’re respecting that as an author.  Moods mix with happenings, characters develop through tiny instances, the ride is short and fast but worth the wait.

 Write down three instants, three small moments that have the potential to alter someone’s life, even if that change is small. › Slipping in the shower, seeing an ex across the room at a party, picking a shade of lipstick, etc › (good potential for nonfiction here, btw.)  Pick one and write a flash fiction piece that is fewer than 750 words.

 Take a classic story and make it flash fiction. 6 word, folks. 6 words.  Examples! › The times were good. Also bad. “A Tale of Two Cities” › Kids sneak around, get married, die. “Romeo and Juliet” › Desperate, noble poor get shafted. Repeatedly. “The Grapes of Wrath”

 Go outside and listen to at least two separate conversations. Don’t be rude/obvious. (Be cool, man, be cool.) › Write down general notes about the conversation and what’s being said. Make no attempt to gather verbatim what is being said; rather, get the gist written down.  Take those notes and either recreate the conversation, create a poem out of it, generate a flash fiction scene out of it, just do something with the notes.