Flash fiction is fiction of extreme brevity. There is no widely accepted definition of the length of the category. Some self-described markets for flash fiction impose caps as low as 300, while others consider stories as long as 1000 words to be flash fiction.
Other names for flash fiction include sudden fiction, microfiction, micro-story, postcard fiction, prosetry and short short story, though distinctions are sometimes drawn between some of th...
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Flash fiction is fiction of extreme brevity. There is no widely accepted definition of the length of the category. Some self-described markets for flash fiction impose caps as low as 300, while others consider stories as long as 1000 words to be flash fiction.
Other names for flash fiction include sudden fiction, microfiction, micro-story, postcard fiction, prosetry and short short story, though distinctions are sometimes drawn between some of these terms; for example, sometimes 1,000 words is considered the cut-off between "flash fiction" and the slightly longer "sudden fiction".
The term "flash fiction" may have originated from a 1992 anthology of that title. As the editors said in their introduction, their definition of a "flash fiction" was a story that would fit on two facing pages of a typical digest-sized literary magazine, or about 750 words.
Flash fiction has roots going back to Aesop's Fables, and practitioners have included Bolesław Prus, Anton Chekhov, O. Henry, Franz...
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