Last fall, I decided to enter my first ever writing competition. To make it more challenging, I decided to write a story for a Flash Fiction Contest. Flash Fiction is a complete story – start to finish – in a thousand words or less.
Some of you might think that I played it safe because I chose a contest requiring a small amount of writing. But you can’t understand Flash Fiction until you’ve tried writing Flash Fiction. You aren’t allowed pages upon pages to establish a character. You have to do that in a mere sentence or two.
Flash fiction is definitely an exercise in brevity and understanding what your story is truly about. There are no bunny trails to wander down.
I won second place in that contest for my submission entitled “Blue.” This February it was published in the online monthly newsletter/journal of the Writers’ Guild Texas.
You can read it here.