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, 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), nanotale, and "micro-story".
Some commentators have suggested that flash fiction possesses a unique literary quality, in its ability to hint at or imply a larger story.
Video Flash fiction
History
Flash fiction has roots going back to prehistory, recorded at origin of writing, including fables and parables, notably Aesop's Fables in the west, and Panchatantra and Jataka tales in India. Later examples include the tales of Nasreddin, and Zen koans 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, Ambrose Bierce, 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.
William 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 Michio Tsuzuki (????).
Maps Flash fiction
Authors
Practitioners have included Saadi of Shiraz ("Gulistan of Sa'di"), Boles?aw Prus, Anton Chekhov, O. Henry, Franz Kafka, H.P. Lovecraft, Yasunari Kawabata, Ernest Hemingway, Julio Cortázar, Arthur C. Clarke, Richard Brautigan, Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Fredric Brown, John Cage, Philip K. Dick and Robert Sheckley.
Hemingway also wrote 18 pieces of flash fiction that were included in his first short-story collection, In Our Time. 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 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, David Gaffney and Robert Scotellaro and online include Sherrie Flick, Bruce Holland Rogers, Steve Almond, Barbara Henning, Grant Faulkner, and Nancy Stohlman.
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 Argentina, notable contemporary contributors to the genre have included Marco Denevi, Luisa Valenzuela, and Ana María Shua.
The Italian writer Italo Calvino consciously searched for a short narrative form, drawing inspiration from Argentine writers Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares and finding that Monterroso's was "the most perfect he could find"; "El dinosaurio", in turn, possibly inspired his "The Dinosaurs".
In France and Francophone countries, micronouvelles have been popularized by authors such as Jacques Fuentealba and Vincent Bastin.
German-language authors of Kürzestgeschichten, influenced by brief narratives penned by Bertolt Brecht and Franz Kafka, have included Peter Bichsel, Heimito von Doderer, Günter Kunert, and Helmut Heißenbüttel.
The Arabic-speaking world has produced a number of micro-story authors, including the Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz, 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.
Journals
A number of print journals dedicate themselves to flash fiction. These include Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine and the Vestal Review.
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.
A comprehensive list of online magazines accepting flash fiction.
Author Paulo Coelho remarked that the "democratization of communication offered by the Internet has made positive in-roads" and directly influenced the style's popularity. The form is popular, with most online literary journals now publishing flash fiction.
Social media has also enabled a rapid spread of the genre, with publishers such as The Anonymous Writer and The Third Word Press using flash-fiction to create stories on social media.
In the summer of 2017, The New Yorker ran a series of flash fiction stories online.
See also
- Fable
- Minisaga
- Parable
- Prose poetry
- Short story
- Talehunt
Notes
Bibliography
- Christopher Kasparek, "Two Micro-Stories by Boles?aw Prus," The Polish Review, 1995, no. 1, pp. 99-103.
- Zygmunt Szweykowski, Twórczo?? Boles?awa Prusa (The Art of Boles?aw Prus), 2nd ed., Warsaw, Pa?stwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1972.
External links
- The dictionary definition of flash fiction at Wiktionary
- Examples of and exploring what flash fiction is.
- Infographic on the types of flash fiction.
Source of article : Wikipedia
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