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Saturday 31 March 2018

In a Flash



Last week I entered a story into a competition. As I've said in a previous post, writing to competition rules is good discipline and a great (and you never know, possibly profitable) way of practicing the craft of writing.

With a 1000 word limit, this particular competition qualified as flash fiction and, my word, that was tough! I am naturally verbose and this spills over into my writing, but the risk I take with rambling on is that I bore my readers and they put down my writing, never bothering to finish reading the story. So writing to a tight word count is my way of training myself to cut the crap out of my writing. And as a proofreader for several publications, I know just how much of what people write and think is essential, can be cut out, the effect of which is often to tighten a piece of writing until it right to convey the message with maximum impact. Less is more, so they say and in this respect, "they" are right. 

So  here are some of my thoughts on how to write a concise story. This can be applied to other types of writing: features, letters, reports, monologues, scripts, blog posts...


  • Write your first draft freely, then work on it - this lets you freely explore your ideas and lets the creativity flow
  • Then rework the piece taking all unnecessary words out - these are words that don't add anything to the meaning of the sentence. Like "very" or "really".
  • Use strong nouns and verbs and you can get rid of adjectives that don't add to the sense of what you are writing. Try it out, it works.

  • Do you need to elaborate on how someone was talking when using dialogue? Readers can become distracted when faced with a variety of ways of speaking. Have them focus on what is being said rather than on whether they whispered softly (how else would you whisper?), or shouted loudly (ouch, too much!). "Said" is often all you need.
  • Pick a key emotion on which to hang your story.
  • Limit your images: one or two strong images make a more lasting impact than many crammed into a tight word limit.
  • Pick a key theme and stick to that one - there is no room in 1000 or fewer words to elaborate or complicate.
  • Limit the number of scenes since world building and context setting can take up much of your word count.
  • Limit to just one or two characters - make it personal and make it focused and the reader will be swiftly hooked, engaged and rewarded.
  • Use a small idea for a small story and reserve big ideas for longer pieces of writing.
  • Limit the viewpoints - one character, one viewpoint tends to work best.
Final tip? Just write and enjoy the process. Work hard enough and you may be rewarded for it in a competition win or publication.


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