Flash Fiction and the Essence of Creative Writing

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Creative writing covers a vast area.  No writer or writing genre can encompass creative writing.  To encompass creative writing is not the purpose of this article.  The purpose of this article is to present the qualities of flash fiction to the reader and to argue that within the limited confines of the flash fiction story will be found the best qualities of all creative writing.

Flash fiction is defined by its short length.  Unlike much creative writing, flash fiction must contain within its very finite length all of the elements of the short story.  These elements are characterization, description, conflict or tension, story development, resolution, a beginning, a middle and an end.  When the flash fiction story contains maybe only 200 to 700 words, the challenge to the writer of this genre is made clear.

Why would a writer commit to the flash fiction form?  What is the attraction of writing flash fiction?

Perhaps it’s the purity of the form.  The form is unforgiving.  Perhaps because flash fiction is part of the literary revolution: it has not been completely accepted as a true art form on the same level as the short story, the play or the novel.  Perhaps because it is still considered new even though it has been around for thousands of years.  It can be found in the holy books of all the major religions.

There is one thing that everyone (readers, writers and critics) can agree upon.  Flash fiction is the farthest distillation of the short story.  A short story cannot get any shorter.  And this brings us to the point of this article.

If flash fiction is the farthest distillation of the short story, does that not make it the very essence of creative writing?  We are not talking poetry here.  If the writer has luck, we are talking about short fiction that has two, three maybe four or five dimensions in it.  We are talking beyond poetry.  That judgement must be made by readers and writers and literary historians.