What is Flash Fiction?: Some Provisional Ideas
"Flash fiction" is...
... longer than micro-fiction (10-300 words) but shorter than traditional short stories. Flash fiction is usually a story of a single act, sometimes the culmination of several unwritten events.
"... a compact work with glistening barbs that sink below the reader's consciousness and continue to tug at the cognitive sinews-- tickled with laughter, fear, nausea, confusion,. . . . "
"... a scene, a moment in or out of perceived time, with some beginning, middle or end--or well, not--as long as some intended impact makes contact. "
"... punches over pokes, preferrably"
"... about moments of beauty and meaning. Only it should be about moments of beauty and meaning that happen to people who aren't pompous and boring. "
"... short, sweet, and sweaty."
"... just don't filler around."
"... thunder... and then the seconds stretch into scenes brilliant in their brevity, stark in their suddeness, and finally... Flash."
"... word punching."
"... a writing gyration of words that, upon reaching climax, seeps from every orifice of the author and settles in an oozing pool of gasping satisfaction upon the page."
or
"... gyration of words. Reaching climax, seeps from every orifice. Settles in oozing. It is gasping page satisfaction. "
". . . word punching as a form of respect."
Examples:
One staff favorite is "A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life" by David Foster Wallace
You might also check out Eclectic Flash, a very cool journal devoted to flash forms.
Submissions should be no more than 1,000 words.
Please send no more than 3 submissions.
Send your work to euphem@ilstu.edu
Euphemism Campus Box 5555 Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790