Flash fiction is a fictional work of extreme brevity that still offers character and plot development. Identified varieties, many of them defined by

word count The word count is the number of words in a document or passage of text. Word counting may be needed when a text is required to stay within certain numbers of words. This may particularly be the case in academia, legal proceedings, journalism and ad ...

, include the six-word story; the 280-character story (also known as " twitterature"); the "dribble" (also known as the " minisaga," 50 words); the " drabble" (also known as "microfiction," 100 words); "sudden fiction" (750 words); "flash fiction" (1,000 words); and "microstory". Christopher Kasparek, "Two Micro-Stories by

Bolesław Prus Aleksander Głowacki (20 August 1847 – 19 May 1912), better known by his pen name Bolesław Prus (), was a Polish novelist, a leading figure in the history of Polish literature and philosophy, as well as a distinctive voice in world li ...

," ''

The Polish Review ''The Polish Review'' is an English-language academic journal published quarterly in New York City by the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America. ''The Polish Review'' was established in 1956. Editors-in-chief The following persons hav ...

'', 1995, no. 1, pp. 99-103. Some commentators have suggested that flash fiction possesses a unique literary quality in its ability to hint at or imply a larger story.

History

Flash fiction has roots going back to prehistory, recorded at origin of writing, including

fable Fable is a literary genre: a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse (poetry), verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are Anthropomorphism, anthropomorphized, and that illustrat ...

s and parables, notably ''

Aesop's Fables Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE. Of diverse origins, the stories associated with his name have descended to ...

'' in the west, and Panchatantra and

Jataka tales The Jātakas (meaning "Birth Story", "related to a birth") are a voluminous body of literature native to India which mainly concern the previous births of Gautama Buddha in both human and animal form. According to Peter Skilling, this genre is ...

in India. Later examples include the tales of

Nasreddin Nasreddin () or Nasreddin Hodja (other variants include: Mullah Nasreddin Hooja, Nasruddin Hodja, Mullah Nasruddin, Mullah Nasriddin, Khoja Nasriddin) (1208-1285) is a character in the folklore of the Muslim world from Arabia to Central Asia ...

, and

Zen Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), and ...

koan A (; , ; ko, 화두, ; vi, công án) is a story, dialogue, question, or statement which is used in Zen practice to provoke the "great doubt" and to practice or test a student's progress in Zen. Etymology The Japanese term is the Sino-J ...

s such as '' The Gateless Gate''. In the United States, early forms of flash fiction can be found in the 19th century, notably in the figures of

Walt Whitman Walter Whitman (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among ...

Ambrose Bierce Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24, 1842 – ) was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and American Civil War veteran. His book '' The Devil's Dictionary'' was named as one of "The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature" by ...

, and Kate Chopin. In the 1920s flash fiction was referred to as the "short short story" and was associated with '' Cosmopolitan'' magazine; and in the 1930s, collected in anthologies such as ''The American Short Short Story''. Somerset Maugham was a notable proponent, with his ''Cosmopolitans: Very Short Stories'' (1936) being an early collection. In Japan, flash fiction was popularized in the post-war period particularly by . In 2020 The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin established the first curated collection of flash fiction artifacts in the United States.

Authors

Practitioners have included Saadi of Shiraz ("

Gulistan of Sa'di ''Gulistān'' ( fa, گُلِستان, Golestān, The Flower Garden; ), sometimes spelled Golestan, is a landmark of Persian literature, perhaps its single most influential work of prose. Written in 1258 CE, it is one of two major works of the P ...

"),

, Anton Chekhov, O. Henry,

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It ...

, H.P. Lovecraft,

Yasunari Kawabata was a Japanese novelist and short story writer whose spare, lyrical, subtly shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award. His works have enjoyed broad international appeal a ...

Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century f ...

, Julio Cortázar,

Daniil Kharms Daniil Ivanovich Kharms (russian: Дании́л Ива́нович Хармс; – 2 February 1942) was an early Soviet-era Russian avant-gardist and absurdist poet, writer and dramatist. Early years Kharms was born as Daniil Yuvach ...

, Arthur C. Clarke, Richard Brautigan,

Ray Bradbury Ray Douglas Bradbury (; August 22, 1920June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of modes, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery fictio ...

, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.,

Fredric Brown Fredric Brown (October 29, 1906 – March 11, 1972) was an American science fiction, fantasy, and mystery writer.D. J. McReynolds, "The Short Fiction of Fredric Brown" in Frank N. Magill, (ed.) ''Survey of Science Fiction Literature'', Vol. 4 ...

, John Cage, Philip K. Dick and

Robert Sheckley Robert Sheckley (July 16, 1928 – December 9, 2005) was an American writer. First published in the science-fiction magazines of the 1950s, his many quick-witted stories and novels were famously unpredictable, absurdist, and broadly comical. ...

. Hemingway also wrote 18 pieces of flash fiction that were included in his first short-story collection, '' In Our Time'' (1925). It is disputed whether (to win a bet), as alleged, he also wrote the flash fiction " For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn". Also notable are the 62 "short-shorts" which comprise ''Severance,'' the thematic collection by

Robert Olen Butler Robert Olen Butler (born January 20, 1945) is an American fiction writer. His short-story collection '' A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain'' was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1993. Early life Butler was born in Granite City, Illin ...

in which each story describes the remaining 90 seconds of conscious awareness within human heads which have been decapitated. English-speaking writers well known for their published flash fiction include

Lydia Davis Lydia Davis (born July 15, 1947) is an American short story writer, novelist, essayist, and translator from French and other languages, who often writes short (one or two pages long) short stories. Davis has produced several new translations of ...

, David Gaffney, Robert Scotellaro, and Nancy Stohlman, and online include Sherrie Flick, Bruce Holland Rogers,

Steve Almond Steve Almond (born October 27, 1966) is an American short-story writer, essayist and author of ten books, three of which are self-published. Life Almond was raised in Palo Alto, California, graduated from Henry M. Gunn High School and receive ...

, Barbara Henning, Grant Faulkner. Spanish-speaking literature has many authors of microstories, including Augusto Monterroso (" El Dinosaurio") and Luis Felipe Lomelí (" El Emigrante"). Their microstories are some of the shortest ever written in that language. In Spain, authors of ''microrrelatos'' (very short fictions) have included Andrés Neuman, Ramón Gómez de la Serna, José Jiménez Lozano, Javier Tomeo, José María Merino, Juan José Millás, and Óscar Esquivias. In his collection ''La mitad del diablo'' (Páginas de Espuma, 2006), Juan Pedro Aparicio included the one-word story Luis XIV, which in its entirety reads: "Yo" ("I"). In Argentina, notable contemporary contributors to the genre have included Marco Denevi, Luisa Valenzuela, and

Ana María Shua Ana María Shua (born 1951) is an Argentine writer. She is particularly well known for her work in microfiction. Shua has published over eighty books in numerous genres including novels, short stories, microfiction, poetry, drama, children's lit ...

. The Italian writer

Italo Calvino Italo Calvino (, also , ;. RAI (circa 1970), retrieved 25 October 2012. 15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985) was an Italian writer and journalist. His best known works include the '' Our Ancestors'' trilogy (1952–1959), the ''Cosmicomi ...

consciously searched for a short narrative form, drawing inspiration from Argentine writers

Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known b ...

and

Adolfo Bioy Casares Adolfo Bioy Casares (; 15 September 1914 – 8 March 1999) was an Argentine fiction writer, journalist, diarist, and translator. He was a friend and frequent collaborator with his fellow countryman Jorge Luis Borges. He is the author of the Fa ...

and finding that Monterroso's was "the most perfect he could find"; "El dinosaurio", in turn, possibly inspired his "The Dinosaurs". German-language authors of ''Kürzestgeschichten,'' influenced by brief narratives penned by Bertolt Brecht and

, have included Peter Bichsel, Heimito von Doderer,

Günter Kunert Günter Kunert (; 6 March 1929 – 21 September 2019) was a German writer. Based in East Berlin, he published poetry from 1947, supported by Bertold Brecht. After he had signed a petition against the deprivation of the citizenship of Wolf Bierman ...

, and Helmut Heißenbüttel. The

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

-speaking world has produced a number of microstory authors, including the

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...

-winning Egyptian author

Naguib Mahfouz Naguib Mahfouz Abdelaziz Ibrahim Ahmed Al-Basha ( arz, نجيب محفوظ عبد العزيز ابراهيم احمد الباشا, ; 11 December 1911 – 30 August 2006) was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature. M ...

, whose book ''Echoes of an Autobiography'' is composed mainly of such stories. Other flash fiction writers in Arabic include Zakaria Tamer, Haidar Haidar, and Laila al-Othman. In the Russian-speaking world the best known flash fiction author is

Linor Goralik Linor Goralik (russian: link=no, Лино́р Гора́лик, born Yuliya Borisovna Goralik, russian: link=no, Юлия Борисовна Горалик on 9 July 1975, Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian SSR) is a Russian-speaking author, poet, artis ...

. In the southwestern

Indian state India is a federal union comprising 28 states and 8 union territories, with a total of 36 entities. The states and union territories are further subdivided into districts and smaller administrative divisions. History Pre-indepen ...

Kerala Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South ...

PK Parakkadavu is known for his many microstories in the

Malayalam language Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 22 scheduled languages of India. Malayalam was d ...

Journals

A number of print journals dedicate themselves to flash fiction. These include ''Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine''.

Internet

Access to the Internet has enhanced an awareness of flash fiction, with online journals being devoted entirely to the style. ''SmokeLong Quarterly'', founded by Dave Clapper in 2003, is "dedicated to bringing the best flash fiction to the web ... whether written by widely published authors or those new to the craft." Other online flash fiction journals include ''wigleaf'', ''Flash Fiction Online'' and ''Flash Fiction Magazine''. In a CNN article on the subject, the author remarked that the "democratization of communication offered by the Internet has made positive in-roads" in the specific area of flash fiction, and directly influenced the style's popularity. The form is popular, with most online literary journals now publishing flash fiction. In the summer of 2017, ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'' began running a series of flash fiction stories online every summer.

Notes

Bibliography

* Christopher Kasparek, "Two Micro-Stories by

," ''

'', 1995, no. 1, pp. 99–103. * Zygmunt Szweykowski, ''Twórczość Bolesława Prusa'' (The Art of

), 2nd ed., Warsaw,

Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy The State Publishing Institute PIW ( pl, Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, PIW) is a Polish publishing house founded in Warsaw by the Polish state after World War II, in 1946. ''PIW'' specializes in literature, history, philosophy, and the social sc ...

, 1972.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Flash Fiction Fiction Fiction forms Short story types English-language literary awards Flash Fiction awards Literary terminology no:Lynfiksjon