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The shorter a story is the less room a writer has for mistakes.  This is why flash fiction is so difficult to write.  It’s not so much that every word in the story must count, which it does, but every word “left out” of the story has to count, too.

If the writer writes “to” when the correct word is “too” the writer has made two mistakes even though only one word was spelt wrong.

Then there’s the form of the very short story which is exactly the same as the long story; the setup, the buildup and the payoff have plenty of room in the longer story but little room in the 300-hundred-word story.

And what about characterization?  In the longer story the writer can use several paragraphs telling the reader what kind of person a character is.  If the writer of the flash fiction story did this the story would be over before anything could happen.

Conflict in the very short story is the only reason for writing the story.  Since the story is so short the conflict must not be out of proportion to what the length of the story can handle.  Flash fiction is a small canvas and therefore must tell a small story; but the impact of the story goes far beyond the end of the story.  The flash fiction story is much like life.  One thing leads to another.  It’s just that the very short story only gives us a very small but important moment in that life.

And another thing.  A writer should give a great deal of thought to the last line of a piece of flash fiction.  The last line doesn’t have to be a clever twist but it does have to bring the story to a believable conclusion.

Flash fiction is the kind of creative writing that will test a writer’s soul.