Re: Brevity: A Flash Fiction Handbook Books Pdf File
Magali Swinderman
In Brevity, David Galef provides a guide to writing flash fiction, from tips on technique to samples by canonical and contemporary authors to provocative prompts that inspire powerful stories in a little space. Galef traces the genre back to its varied origins, from the short-short to nanofiction, with examples that include vignettes, prose poems, character sketches, fables, lists, twist stories, surrealism, and metafiction. The authors range from the famous, such as Colette and Borges, to today's voices, like Roxane Gay and Bruce Holland Rogers. A writer and longtime creative writing teacher, Galef also shows how flash fiction skills translate to other types of writing. Brevity is an indispensable resource for anyone working in this increasingly popular form. For more information, see davidgalef.com/brevity.
In Brevity, David Galef provides a guide to writing flash fiction, from tips on technique to samples by canonical and contemporary authors to provocative prompts that inspire powerful stories in a little space. Galef traces the genre back to its varied origins, from the short-short to nanofiction, with examples that include vignettes, prose poems, character sketches, fables, lists, twist stories, surrealism, and metafiction. The authors range from the famous, such as Colette and Borges, to today's voices, like Roxane Gay and Bruce Holland Rogers. A writer and longtime creative writing teacher, Galef also shows how flash fiction skills translate to other types of writing. Brevity is an indispensable resource for anyone working in this increasingly popular form.
Flash fiction is changing the way we tell stories. Carving away the excess, eliminating all but the most essential, flash fiction is putting the story through a literary dehydrator, leaving the meat without the fat. And it only looks easy.
The Best of Brevity: Twenty Groundbreaking Years of Flash Nonfiction. Edited by Zoë Bossiere and Dinty W. Moore. Rose Metal Press.com, Paperback, November 17, 2020. 256pp, $16.95. Please buy your copy at your local independent bookstore.
The book itself is a surprise. It is a hybrid of craft book and memoir of craft, including short meditations on different aspects of flash fiction including context, collar, poetics, white space, omission, the sentence, challenges and endings.
Within The Art of Brevity, Faulkner hopes to help readers find their way into this form of flash fiction. He structured the book as meditations on flash fiction to encourage readers to come to their own conclusions and each section ends with a set of prompts.
Galef: But sometimes that comes from a sheer lyric burst. Is there anything about flash fiction that frustrates you? What would you like to see done differently, or more frequently with the form?
Flash fiction, also called minimalist fiction, is a fictional work of extreme brevity[1] that still offers character and plot development. Identified varieties, many of them defined by word count, include the six-word story;[2] the 280-character story (also known as "twitterature");[3] the "dribble" (also known as the "minisaga", 50 words);[2] the "drabble" (also known as "microfiction", 100 words);[2] "sudden fiction" (750 words);[4] "flash fiction" (1,000 words); and "microstory".[5]
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.[8]
It wasn't until 1992, however, that the term "flash fiction" came into use as a category/genre of fiction.[9][10] It was coined by James Thomas,[11] who together with Denise Thomas and Tom Hazuka edited the 1992 landmark anthology titled Flash Fiction: 72 Very Short Stories,[12] and was introduced by Thomas in his Introduction to that volume.[13][14] Since then the term has gained wide acceptance as a form, especially in the W. W. Norton Anthologies co-edited by Thomas: Flash Fiction America (W.W. Norton & Co., 2023), Flash Fiction International (W.W. Norton & Co., 2015), Flash Fiction Forward (W.W. Norton & Co., 2006), and Flash Fiction: 72 Very Short Stories (W.W. Norton & Co., 1992).
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".[19]
The Arabic-speaking world has produced a number of microstory 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.
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."[25] Other online flash fiction journals include wigleaf, Flash Fiction Online, Flash Fiction Magazine, not to mention The Webby Award recognized Dribble Drabble Review, founded and edited by Keith Hoerner, MFA.[26]
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.[27] The form is popular, with most online literary journals now publishing flash fiction.
Flash fiction allows the rags and detritus of the everyday to become gems and jewels. To be a junk collector is by definition a practice of looking at the world differently: finding purpose in other people\u2019s castoffs, beauty in other people\u2019s trash. Flash fiction is similarly experimental because brevity changes the contours of a conventional story. A flash story can be a list, a letter, a text exchange, a Twitter argument.
Because of its size, flash fiction invites using forms of writing that we use every day, but in new, inventive ways. I\u2019ve written stories in the form of customer reviews of Dansko clogs or a guest\u2019s entry in a bed and breakfast log.
With contributions from Krys Malcolm Belc, Jenny Boully, Brian Doyle, Roxane Gay, Daisy Hernández, Michael Martone, Ander Monson, Patricia Park, Kristen Radtke, Diane Seuss, Abigail Thomas, Jia Tolentino, and so many more, The Best of Brevity offers unparalleled diversity of style, form, and perspective for those interested in reading, writing, or teaching the flash nonfiction form.
Similar to Klay, fellow Fairfield MFA faculty member Dinty W. Moore, editor-in-chief of the popular online flash-fiction literary journal Brevity, is also receiving national attention for his latest book, The Best of Brevity: Twenty Groundbreaking Years of Flash Nonfiction. Featuring a variety of nonfiction forms written by well-known and emerging writers in just 750 words or less, The Best of Brevity offers 84 of the online journal's best-loved and most memorable reader favorites, collected in print for the first time. Compressed to their essence, the essays abound with drama, grief, love, and anger, resulting in an anthology that is as varied as it is unforgettable.
AMY BARNES has words at a variety of sites including: The New Southern Fugitives, FlashBack Fiction, Popshot Quarterly, Flash Fiction Magazine, X-R-A-Y Lit, Anti-Heroin Chic, Museum of Americana, Penny Fiction, Stymie Mag, No Contact Mag, Sublunary Review, The Molotov Cocktail, Lucent Dreaming, Lunate Fiction, Rejection Lit, Perhappened, Cabinet of Heed, Spartan Lit, National Flash Flood Day and others. Her work has been long-listed at Reflex Press (third place), Bath Flash Fiction, Retreat West, and TSS Publishing. She volunteers at Fractured Lit, CRAFT, Taco Bell Quarterly, Retreat West, NFFD, The MacGuffin, and Narratively. She is nominated for Best Microfictions 2021 (Spartan Lit) and a Pushcart Prize. Her flash collection Mother Figures will be published in May, 2021 by ELJ Editions, Ltd.
Armed with that newfound passion, Slaughter recently wrote When You Cross That Line, a collection of five short stories, known as flash fiction, totaling around 4,500 words. The book was published in May after Slaughter won the 2014 Best of There Will Be Words competition in Orlando.
Grant Faulkner is the executive director of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and the cofounder of 100 Word Story. His work has been widely anthologized in flash-fiction collections, and he is the author of several books, including All the Comfort Sin Can Provide, Fissures, and Nothing Short of 100: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story. His most recent book is The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story.
The bad: While the book's introduction section does go into detail about why flash fiction has started to gain in popularity (we live in a busy world, and people like short reads they can easily digest on their daily commute, or on a park bench while sipping a latte), the book sort of throws you right into the deep end without easing you in with some simpler prompts to get you ready.
Amazing read number two is the latest collection of flash fiction by Laura Besley. Published by Irish Indie publisher Beir Bua Press (Un) Natural Elements is ready and waiting to blow your literary socks off!
Fly On The Wall Press are one of my favourite discoveries of the past couple of years. From their literary stable has bolted some of the best poetry and flash fiction. And their latest release How To Bring Him Back: A story by Claire HM is no exception.
Weaving the magic that keeps great flash fiction alive Claire creates and then develops three believable and compelling characters. Each has their own motivations, each with their own exploitable flaws, which burst from the page. Their interactions are by turn tender, disturbing, painful and delightfully complex.
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