One of the fun things about this reading challenge, there is always at least one good rabbit hole to jump down every week. This week’s rabbit hole is sponsored by the words “Flash” and “Fiction.”
The Writers Digest has become my carry-everywhere magazine. Anytime I think I may find myself away from home and stuck in a holding pattern, I bring along an issue of Writers Digest to read. Between that and searching about for various threads I chase about writing I’ve been running across a few terms I’ve sort of understood from context but never really paid much attention to. However, as I continue with my Ray Bradbury challenge, the different forms of writing keep vying for my attention and most of them seem to fall under the heading of “Flash Fiction.” So, I thought it was time to disambiguate some of my newfound vocabulary. I wanted to make sure I didn’t Dribble when I should have Drabbled and I thought I should make sure I never Suddenly Flashed a Nano Postcard story when all I needed was just a bit of Twitterature…
One of the more curious forms of short fiction I encountered was the Six Word Story. Often attributed to Ernest Hemmingway (but generally considered implausible) was a complete story, told with only six words.
For sale: baby shoes, never worn.
I’ll give you a moment to let that one sink in.
The idea of course, and this is true of all forms of flash fiction, is to produce the most impact with as few words as possible. In the case of the Six Word Story, it is even more interesting because each of the six words are entirely innocuous and are even presented in a way commonly and uninterestingly used. It’s not until the reader takes those six particular words, arranged in that particular order, and starts adding their own story around them does a story even emerge.
As you can probably guess, the Six Word Story is not the only form of Flash Fiction. With some help from Professor Google, I came up with this short key to fiction writing types:
| Story Type | Word Count |
|---|---|
| Six Word Story | 6 (exactly) |
| Twitterature | < 280 characters |
| Dribble | 50 (exactly) |
| Nanofiction | 50 – 100 |
| Drabble | 100 (exactly) |
| Postcard Fiction | 25 – 250 (500) |
| Microfiction | 100 – 300/400 (500) |
| Sudden Fiction | 750 – 1,000 |
| Flash Fiction | < 1,000 (1,500) |
| Short Story | 1,000 – 7,000 (10,000) |
| Short Publication | < 4,000 (6,000) |
| Long Publication | < 10,000 (15,000) |
| Novelette | 7,000 – 17,500 (20,000) |
| Novella | 17,500 – 40,000 (50,000) |
| Novel | 40,000 – 120,000 |
The exact numbers and groupings vary, but seemed fairly consistent in my, admittedly brief, searching.
With that, I will close out Week 004 of my reading and writing challenge with my report card and my very first, Six Word Story (offered here in its entirety)…
Concert 6pm. Lead Singer auditions 4pm.
My Week 004 Report Card:
Poetry (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
- Rain in Summer
- To A Child
- The Occultation of Orion
- The Bridge
- To the Driving Cloud
- The Day is Done
- Afternoon in February
Essays (Wendell Berry)
- Discipline and Hope (part 10)
- Discipline and Hope (part 11)
- In Defense of Literacy
- The Making of a Marginal Farm
- The Unsettling of America
- The Ecological Crisis as a Crisis of Character
- The Ecological Crisis as a Crisis of Agriculture
Short Stories (O. Henry)
- A Municipal Report
- A Fog in Santone
- Friends in San Rosario
- Round the Circle
- Hearts and Hands
- The Lonesome Road
- The Pimienta Pancakes