Writing Flash Fiction Without Outlines

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For years I religiously made an outline before beginning a short story.  It made sense to do this because I wrote short stories that were 2,000 to 4,000 words long.

I made character sketches.  I made notes on what the weather would be like in the story.  I figured out what parts of the story would be exposition and what parts would be scenes.  I wrote down snatches of dialogue.

I would leave my notebook open on my writing desk for days because writing a regular length story was a major undertaking and I would constantly, off and on, jot down things about the story in my notebook.  There were many details to get right before I actually started writing the story.

Then came the writing of the story which was still a journey of discovery because inevitably the story would change as I wrote it.  Finally, I’d get to the end of the story and guess what?  That was just the first draft.

Two, three or four drafts would follow and then afterward came the repeated proofreading for spelling and grammatical errors and editing for diction and syntax (word choice and word order) and the eliminating of all unnecessary words.  Writing a regular length story was a major process.

The good news for the writer of flash fiction is that a 100-to-1,000-word story is less about a “storyline” and more about “capturing” a moment in time.  It’s like writing a short poem.

Once the flash fiction writer figures out the significant event to be captured in words, the planning stage is over.  The only thing left to do is putting the right word in the right order which is better known as repeated revision, a process of trial and error.

You don’t need an outline for that.