waxseal
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23/04/2008 | It's a great explanation folks - check it out. |
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ParchmentPoetry
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23/04/2008 | Thanks for your explanation. It helps a great deal. Janet |
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yican
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24/04/2008 | Yeah I agree, it's very enlightening. Read it people! |
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Arley
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24/04/2008 | Thanks for posting this, Down Under, very informative. I couldn't agree more, the whole point of FLASH is the punch line, very, very much like telling a joke. (Same comment I put on your piece)
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ThePenguin
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25/04/2008 | BTW, those who disagree have permission to say so. To me,ALL opinions count! |
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rosiewolf
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26/04/2008 | I disagree as would be expected from a writer who writes plotted flash.
I know there is a great deal of conjecture about what is and isn't flash. I've been reading a great deal of this and workshopping with some really visionary writers of this form. Just because a flash has character/conflict/resolution/action(a plot) does not make it a non flash. On the other side, just because a piece skirts perilously close to verse and contains little or no closure--it does not necessarily follow that it is or is not a flash.
Certainly flash should have a unique voice, efficiency of language and tight focus, but the overall quality that makes or breaks a flash is memorability. It needs to hang in the mind like an aftertaste.
It is entirely possible to achieve this using a plot. In fact, Vestal Review only accepts plotted flash.
If you can achieve that memorability without a punchline or snappy dénouement, then that is something special and highly publishable.
I think when we try to put narrow constraints on work like this that we lose out. The form becomes an elitist exercise that excludes other ways of working. I'd rather appreciate the wide and fluid range of writing styles that can be possible in this form than to nail it down. |
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ThePenguin
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26/04/2008 | Rosanne: Thank you for your input. However, I may be wrong, but I don't think you read the article.
About Vestal Review - it makes the point that it is looking for "short-shorts", which it is calling "flash fiction", and that's not a problem. Few of the pieces published there are what I would call "flash fiction", but the majority are extremely good short-shorts.
As for nailing down the form... a sonnet is a sonnet because of the form. An ode is an ode because of the form. a limerick is a limerick because of the form. A haiku is a haiku because of the form. A short story is a short story because of the form. An essay is an essay, because of the form. It's not elitist to want to have a definition of the form; it is elitist to say that the form can only be used ion a specific way. It's even more elitist to knochk a definition and suggest that the form restricts "the wide and fluid range of writing styles" - as I've said berfore, function is far more important than form. Forms are a tool that a versatile writer can use to make the function work, not the other way round.
BTW, I DO appreciate your feedback - thank you!
Post edited on: 26/04/2008 08:16:11 PM |
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