National Flash Fiction Day

It's National Flash Fiction Day tomorrow, and I've shared my thoughts on reading and writing flash with Cath Holland as part of Wrapped Up In Books on the Getintothis website, along with many other writers such as Sarah Hilary, Sandra Arnold and F J Morris.


You can read the full article here




AMANDA HUGGINS

‘Flash fiction is perfectly suited to the pace of the twenty-first century, and I love the way you can dip in and out, returning to certain stories time after time as you would with a poetry collection.

I know some readers say they don’t read shorts because they can’t lose themselves in the story the way they can in a novel, yet a cracking flash will leave you with something to think about for days after you’ve read it. Writing flash is both a challenge and a joy.

It’s an opportunity to try and create something as perfect as it can possibly be. When you only have a few hundred words, your language needs to be specific, concise, sparing, lean. When you impose restrictions it can often result in something surprising. I have read flash fiction that has made me cry in the space of two minutes, and stories that have made me hold my breath until I reached the end.

In flash pieces, what isn’t said is as important as what is, and I have a favourite Hemingway quote that sums it up perfectly: “If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things … and the reader … will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them.”’ – Amanda Huggins, Costa Short Story Award 2018 -3rd Prize for Red; author of Separated From the Sea-Special Mention, Saboteur Awards 2019. New collection, Scratched Enamel Heart, Spring 2020.