On Brevity

Someone once asked me how I go about writing flash fiction. I thought some of the 55 word examples from today's writing session would make good anecdotes:

 You can see that this one is pretty messy - I had to do a lot of rearranging and chopping to get what I wanted. At some point I realized I had exactly the right amount of words I needed, but it was all in the wrong order. You'd think it's just a simple matter or reorganizing the sentences and you'd be wrong - doing so also changes the tenses of certain words and changing the tenses can effect the wordcount. The first section was right, but the rest had to be kneaded out slowly.

The final product:

Logic dictated that he had to die eventually. By bullet or bullet train, he didn't care. An end was an end.

He'd heard of this condition before - Quantum Immortality. One multiverse incarnate that would live forever. Him. It was just his luck that he would be saddled with eternity.

He sighed and reloaded the gun.

This one meanwhile, was a much smoother process and came pretty naturally. The squiggles around the middle where where I had placed parentheses in case I decided to add in an extra word in that spot (which I did end up doing, so good call).

There is no scientific name for the delay between lightning and thunder. The light flashes across the empty fields of gold followed by the crash of sound racing to keep up, to catch its always faster partner. The thunder never quite reaches its elusive lover.

I guess what I'm trying to say is come back.

The thing about this art form is that you just have to pick up the knack for it - I have and now I can't stop XD If you're looking to try it out for yourself, I'd advise to just do it; don't start with a word count, just try to write the shortest story you can while still retaining things like detail and character. Try to condense a story into three to five sentences.

That's how I began and after about 25 or so, I started getting into the swing of it and another 25 had me getting pretty good. After you've done that for a while, then you can go for the super stringent word limits without much fear.