If you’re writing flash fiction, I think there are tips you can use from writing for government and commercial audiences.
I’ve recently had my flash fiction story Echo Beach published over on Flash Fiction Magazine. You can read the story over there, then pop back here.
Read Echo Beach at Flash Fiction Magazine
I started writing a lot more flash fiction a couple of years ago. Over a decade of working to simplify government communications, or to express ideas in single sentence statement to the press, means my creative work wants to be short too. I’ll do a first draft and then work on how to expand it because I’ve become sparse by default. That flash fiction is now a popular genre means I’m enjoying bringing my skills to fiction. However, I do want to stretch myself again. Maybe even hit 3,000 words?
Here are the three tips I’ve carried over from government practice to flash fiction writing:
- Read Orwell’s Politics and the English Language. You can find these six rules echoed in every government writing guide since Gower’s Plain Words in the 1950s.
- Look for superfluous ‘that’s. Do a word search for ‘that’ and see how each sentence reads without it. You use ‘that’ to clarify things, so if the sentence works without it you can probably cut it out.
- Read your story aloud. This was my favourite thing for statements to broadcast media. Can I say it smoothly or do I trip over something? Make a note of where you get tangled, then revise those bits.
As always, one of the best things you can do do is read flash fiction regularly. Obviously, Flash Fiction Magazine is a given, and publish daily. There’s also Flashback Fiction who publish historical flash online once a week, and Popshot Magazine which is that increasingly rare beast – a print publication.
If you liked Echo Beach, you can see a list of my other published short stories and where to buy them.