When is flash not short?

No, this is a good place to ask - although I'll port this into our discussion forum.

I've seen a range for Flash Fiction. The longest I've seen described as Flash Fiction is 1500 words, Duotrope (which lists markets for flash and other fiction) describes it as 500 words or fewer.

For the purpose of this forum, we've agreed on 1000 words or fewer, but in all honesty, it depends on the publication. They will usually specify their upper length requirements for Flash somewhere on their submissions page.

At its genesis, flash fiction was 100 words or less. It's grown to 1000 and 1500 hundred words, which nudges on what used to be called short short stories. As a purist, I consider flash fiction as 100 words or less.

I think most consider under 1000 as flash. Under 2000 are short shorts. and 5000 are thongs.

Flash

An editor can call flash fiction, or anything else, whatever he wants. But technically, from 1,000--2,000 words is a short short.

Flash fiction is really anything from 100--1,000 words, but when a specific editor tells you he wants flash fiction up to 500 words, or up to 1,000 words, or even up to 1,500 words, he isn't defining the category, he's simply telling you how much space he has in his particular magazine, and how short or long he enjoys reading such stories.

Trouble comes when someone reads these guidelines and uses them as a definition of the category itself.

Jamesaritchie said:

An editor can call flash fiction, or anything else, whatever he wants. But technically, from 1,000--2,000 words is a short short.

Trouble comes when someone reads these guidelines and uses them as a definition of the category itself.

Click to expand...

Too right, James - Nick Andreychuk used to define flash as 55 words - and if you want him to publish your piece, that's what it had to be. But Jim Stitzel allows up to 1000 words - so it varies from editor to editor as far as requirement are concerned.

Yes, I've always seen flash kept under 1000 words.