A good flash fiction piece is about more than being clever, or finding a gimmick, it’s about capturing my interest in 150 +/- 10 words. That can be done with an interesting world, interesting characters, or a captivating image. Some judges look for an entire story, but I’ve seen great flash that’s just a single scene. There are few, if any, rules that I’m going to ask you to follow, except for these two:
1) Consistency counts. If I feel like I’m reading two different stories smushed together, that takes me out of the story.
2) Grammar/punctuation counts. Not every character speaks the King’s English, and that’s awesome, but the teacher in me says that if your story doesn’t look proofread, where grammar/spelling/punctuation is misused, and not in service of the story, it wasn’t ready.
Mostly, don’t take me out of the story in the middle.
One last thing – I’m terrible with titles, so include them or not as you see fit. 🙂
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Flash! Friday 