|
 hort
shorts, fictions, flash fiction, sudden fiction,
micro fiction, postcard fiction, lightning fiction,
furious fiction. A short short story by any other
name would still be less than 2000 words. Actually,
some loose guidelines for these various terms have
cropped up over the years. Irving Howe defines a
short short as any story with no more than 1500
words and an upper limit of 2500 words. Jerome
Stern's upper limit for micro stories is between
250 and 300 words (postcard and lightning fiction
share these limits). Steve Moss makes the case that
you can tell a complete story in just 55 words. M.
Stanley Bubien, the prolific writer and editor of
StoryBytes, says you can tell one in as few as two
(not counting the title). Flash fiction, according
to the book of the same name, is no longer than 750
words. And sudden fiction comes in at less than
1500 words.
Regardless of which term you prefer, they all
manage -- through implication and precision of
language -- to tell a story in a very short span of
time. In the words of James Thomas in the intro to
his "Flash Fiction" anthology, "Like all fiction
that matters, their success depends not on their
length, but on their depth, their clarity of
vision, their human significance -- the extent to
which the reader can recognize in them the stuff of
real life."
I first became interested in very short fiction
when I read this story by Leonard Michaels in a
college fiction-writing class:
MA
I said, "Ma, do you know what happened?"
She said, "Oh my God."
This story was actually one of a series, but the
professor proceeded to show that these two lines
were in fact a narrative. I was hooked. From there
I discovered the "Flash Fiction" collection and
then "Sudden Fiction." These two volumes, along
with Stern's "Micro Fiction," go with me
everywhere.
The form has gotten a lot of attention during
the past twenty years, and certainly has its share
of critics who dismiss it as story fragments,
short-attention-span theater, anecdotes, sketches,
vingettes or lazy prose poetry. But the form is
probably as old as the written word, and I suspect
the fans outnumber the detractors. I believe depth
and illumination can be found in one page as surely
as in 300 pages. In music, I am moved by
Beethoven's symphonies, but I also find immense
satisfaction in the polished pop gems on The
Beatles' Revolver album and the "pocket
symphonies" on The Beach Boys' Pet
Sounds.
This web site is intended as a resource for
readers and writers of very short fiction. It
contains a bookstore where collections of very
short fiction and books on fiction writing can be
purchased through Amazon.com. There is also a
compilation of web links to workshops, articles,
author sites, on-line fiction magazines, short
short fiction contests, and other related sites.
"The Last Word" features a favorite short short and
is updated monthly.
I hope you find this site useful. I'm always
looking to improve it, so your comments and
suggestions are most welcome. Enjoy.
- W. H. Merklee
"Ma" originally
appeared in "I Would Have Saved Them If I Could" by
Leonard Michaels (1975)
|
