I love to read pretty much anything. If I'm in a reading slump, I'll usually try to find a short story collection (because each piece is so different I'm bound to find something I like) or a suspense novel (because it's quick and - hopefully! - suspenseful and sweeps me up in the drama).
I've always thought I'm a short story writer just because... it's what I write, save for several NaNoWriMo attempts I'm too scared to revisit. So I like learning things from the short story collections I read. The suspense novels are hit or miss. I either like how the twists played out or think the author had a lot of potential but didn't push the plot to the limit.
Then I realized I was still learning from these "escape" reads, because I was noticing what they did compared to what I thought they should do. (Note: I'm not up on a high horse. I don't think I'm the smartest or that my story ideas are the best. It's just that my imagination took things in a different direction, and I like to explore those thoughts.)
I also noticed that some of these suspense novels tried too hard to have something for everyone. There would be the main storyline, a side murder mystery, sex and romance, parallel storylines (perhaps in different decades) that you didn't link together until the very end... It worked, sometimes. Oftentimes, it was a mess.
In flash, you write a piece based on a small moment. Or you tell a larger story with fewer words. Or you write your first draft and then cut out as many words and sentences as you can. Or you imagine your story, and then zoom in on it. How far can you narrow your scope and still have a story?
It's the exact opposite of writing a sprawling novel told in different time periods with all the things happening. It's cutting out everything except what's necessary.
I've been keeping track of my words for my pieces here. I started writing until the story was told, then counting the words. Then I did weeks of 400, 300, 200, and 100 words. I started aiming for 395-405 and 295-305 words. By weeks 200 and 100, I was right on the money each time. I loved the constraints of getting a certain number of words. But more than that, I was noticing where I was using extra words. Unnecessary words that I thought added to the story, but they didn't. Or a phrase could become a single word, and you could still know the type of person I was describing.
It's interesting to me because you can strip down an idea until you have the basics, a kernel, the raw center. And when you write it, you might find that's enough. I'll have to continue studying to figure out the differences between flash fiction and prose poems because maybe writing about a feeling or a single moment is more of a poem than a story, but I think it all depends on how you tell it.
585 words
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