A flash fiction text is only 150 words short/long. Some say it is 75 words long and others say 1500, but we will write 150 words. In this text you remove all extra words like adjectives, adverbs, names, personifications and metaphors. That means that you as a writer leaves the reader to read outside the text and to create his or her own images of the characters and setting in the text.
We will use Banksy´s pictures to create our flash fictions to leave an image in our head and to give the reader another one. This is how you write your flash fiction:
- Choose one picture by Banksy
You can choose from the pictures at the bottom of this page.
- Start in the middle
You don’t have time in this very short form to set scenes and build character. What do you see? What is going on? Don´t tell us what happened before the scene; focus instead on the present.
- Don’t use too many characters
You won’t have time to describe your characters in a ultra-short text. Even a name may be too much. Use nouns instead and skip the adjectives.
- Make sure the ending isn’t at the end
Avoid that the reader stops reading – place the ending in the middle of the story. Give us all the information we need in the first few lines, using the next few paragraphs to take us below the surface. What has happened?
- Your last line should leave us with something
The last line is not the ending since we had that in the middle. The last line should leave the reader with something which will continue to sound after the story has finished. It should not complete the story but rather take us into a new place; a place where we can continue to think about the ideas in the story and wonder what it all meant. What will happen? Or what happens?
- Write long, then go short
Exclude all the extra words (i.e. names, adjectives, metaphors) from the text and make sure it only has 150 words.
- Make your title sweat
The title should have a verb in the present.
- Proofread
Let a friend read your text. Then create a Canva with the Flash Fiction in it and E-mail it in to me together with the picture. We will put up the Canvas in the cafeteria. You can use a tag instead of your name, then you have to make one and upload it to your Canva.
Good luck!
You find all the Canvas here!