How to write Sudden Fiction

Well, I hope you'll join in some of our challenges. They're intended to help people learn to write sudden fiction.

As for the question, I usually start out with a broad brushstroke of an idea - a concept or a message I want to convey and I just write and see what comes out. It usually needs a little work to get the ideas across, but that's how I approach it, anyway.

I do it suddenly.
Really, I just write and see what happens. If I don't like it, I do a different piece and leave the first in my notebook. I do the same thing with poetry.

The thing to remember with short shorts is to focus on one instant. THings will come before and things will come after but the most successful short stories focus on one single event, just one thing that alters a character. It's like zooming in on someone's life really tight.

What nevada said. I've only written four so far from the Flash Fiction challenges in the Mainstream/Contemporary SYW. Each was from the prompt set for the challenge and followed the word count guidelines. Each focused on a specific instant in time or turning point with only enough information given to indicate what was happening.

After reading the threads in this forum, I tried really hard to write something under 1000 words. It was 2300 words...oops, missed the mark. So I cut and cut and cut and the shortest I got it was 1400. Still too long. But I really like it...I posted it in the SYW Horror forum and might submit it somewhere anyway.

And I'll keep trying this flash fiction thing.

Ditto everyone else, pretty much. Start with a concept or idea and see what happens.

For stories I come up with unprompted, it's because I saw something that struck me as odd or funny and started talking about it mentally until it turned into a story. I generally can't do it if I try, though. These tend to be very much "idea" stories.

For prompted stories, generally something I notice after getting the prompt will decide the direction of the story -- a joke, a line on TV, whatever. I may know the ending or may not; I'll generally have the first couple of lines and see where it goes from there.

I naturally write this length, I think. I was surprised recently when I was editing a story from one of the time-limited challenges that started I think around 1200 words? and ended up around 2400. Most of mine wind up quite comfortably in the flash or short-short range.

And I naturally tend toward full length works...so flash fiction and even short stories are completely against my nature. They're a real challenge for me. Maybe that's why I like them...or maybe I'm just sick and twisted.

My short stories usually range from 1000 to 5000 words. To me, it doesn't matter. Sometimes the stories are a little too much for 5000 words, and I may end up with 10,000. The point is, I just write. First I have an idea of a story, and with shorts, I usually have a pretty good idea of a beginning, middle, and end. Then I just sit, BIC, and write. By the time I'm done, I'm usually within range. Then it becomes a matter of fine tuning and polishing.

With super flash: 100 - 1000 words, it's actually trickier because the stories are much shorter, and I tend to over-think and over-plot. To keep a story way under 1000 words I really need to simplify and find my core story -- keep it to one instant or event. No time for deep characterization. And there usually is a twist somewhere -- at least one, preferably at the end. At least that's how I approach my flash stories.

I have written a few flash fics based on prompts, and actually got one published. Prompts are really great for flash.