flashquake Publisher's Page

What Is Flash?
by Debi Orton

Someone asked me recently what flash literature was. Is it solely governed by length? Or is there more to it than that?

He might as well have asked me to describe the qualities of light at sunset.

Yes, length is a determining factor in flash literature. There is no one universal limit for flash, but at flashquake, we've set an admittedly arbitrary limit of 1,000 words for prose, 35 lines for poetry, and a 10-minute running time for plays.

But good flash is about more than length. Successful flash prose needs to tell a complete story — beginning, middle and end. Characters are introduced and developed. There is narrative drive — brevity is no guarantee that the reader is going to slog through a story that doesn't pull them in. And often, there's a twist at the end, the so-called "ah-ha!" moment.

Great flash literature needs to include all these elements and much more. The writing needs to be crisp, clean. The characters need to leap off the page, fully formed, into the reader's imagination. The situation needs to interest the reader. The story needs to be original and told with grace.

And, the very best flash literature includes three important elements in addition to the others I mentioned.

First, it respects the reader and the reader's intelligence. It doesn't over-explain its premise or motivations. It doesn't play coy to trick or fool the reader. It trusts the reader to fill in the blanks from his or her imagination.

Second, it sings. Every word on the page is polished, worried over, chosen for its harmony with the setting that surrounds it.

Third — and this is the hardest to gauge for writers — it leaves the reader thinking about it long after they've finished the story. It exposes something more fundamental than the story being told. Some aspect of our humanity, or of the capriciousness of fate, or of the strength of compassion.

That category — the very best flash literature — is what we're seeking when we decide what to publish in flashquake.

Copyright 2002 by River Road Studios

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