If it takes you a long time to read The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction, edited by Tara L. Masih, it is only because immediately after completing each chapter you will want to stop and write.

In the preface, editors of Rose Metal Press Abigail Beckel and Kathleen Rooney discuss their hope “that bringing together this collection of essays on flash that is neither purely academic nor purely anecdotal will provide a resource for the reader, student, writer, or teacher of flash fiction.” Masih’s deft introduction traces the history of the form in multiple countries, and touches on many of its early practitioners, including Kafka, Colette, Borges, Hemingway, and Yasunari Kawabata. Luckily, The Field Guide avoids the prescriptive approach. People have written very short fiction for a long time, and have called it different things: parables, vignettes, short short stories, tales, sketches, smoke-long stories, flash, flash fiction, nanofiction, and microfiction. Length is a point of contention as well, though a general guideline places a short short somewhere in the 250-1000 word range.

The Field Guide is the first of its kind, and is invaluable for its examples of the form, its exercises, and its 25 insightful and energizing essays by writers such as Jayne Anne Phillips, Pamela Painter, Michael Martone, Jennifer Pieroni, Randall Brown, Robert Olen Butler, Kim Chinquee, Rusty Barnes, Deb Olin Unferth, and Ron Carlson. Further coverage can be found in Joshua Garstka’s Redivider review and Matt Bell’s in The Critical Flame. The book is available from the Rose Metal Press website, which should also be perused for its impressive catalog, soon to include a Field Guide to Prose Poetry.

Tags:   Brooks · Very Short Fiction2 Comments