Flort
- Thread starter Rachel Udin
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Those aren't the usual definitions. A story of exactly 100 words is a drabble. Flash is usually anything of 1000 words or less.
Generally, stories at the lower word count are a harder sell. It's easier to sell flash when it's between 500 and 1000 words. That said, if a market welcomes flash and doesn't have a minimum word count, you should try them.
Generally, stories at the lower word count are a harder sell. It's easier to sell flash when it's between 500 and 1000 words. That said, if a market welcomes flash and doesn't have a minimum word count, you should try them.
Every Day Fiction publishes very short stories sometimes (they recently posted a story by Ken Liu that was well under 50 words). If your fiction is speculative, Daily Science Fiction also publishes very short Flash occasionally.
Alex Shvartsman
I mean a drabble is 100 and anything in the flash I usually see 250+ and the short is around 250-1,000.
I haven't seen a market for flash that are less that 250... but then I was looking about a year ago.
I haven't seen a market for flash that are less that 250... but then I was looking about a year ago.
It might be you're looking for the wrong thing. You're not looking for markets that specifically ask for stories of that length (though if you find one, yay!), but for markets with no minimum word count. The two Alex mentioned don't have a minimum for example.
It will be a hard sell, but if they weren't open to shorter works, they'd set a minimum length.
It will be a hard sell, but if they weren't open to shorter works, they'd set a minimum length.
Sorry, about calling the blows but, when I saw the opener I thought someone would come along and say flash is as widely interpreted as other genres of writing. There's a flash story by a famous writer that goes something like this...Baby shoes for sale, never used. So, a flash story can be very few words. Some say Slaughterhouse 5 has a bunch of flash and short stories interwoven in it, others call it a novel.
If anyone offers you $50.00 to publish your 100 word story and call flash I say go for it.
If anyone offers you $50.00 to publish your 100 word story and call flash I say go for it.
No one said it because the question wasn't about the literary merit of flash fiction. It's about the business side. More specifically, whether any markets take flash of a few hundred words. (The short answer being yes, as we've answered above.)
For nearly all markets I deal with, flash fiction is from one hundred and one words to one thousand words. One hundred words and down is called micro fiction. A short short is from one thousand to two thousand words, and a short story is from two thousand to seven thousand, five hundred words.
Every length already has a term that applies.
I once sold a one hundred word story for an even one hundred dollars. Not a lot of money, but a very good word rate, and an excellent hourly rate, since I wrote the story in under twenty minutes. This is one huge advantage of very short fiction.
Every length already has a term that applies.
I once sold a one hundred word story for an even one hundred dollars. Not a lot of money, but a very good word rate, and an excellent hourly rate, since I wrote the story in under twenty minutes. This is one huge advantage of very short fiction.
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