Flash fiction: 3 unknown literary figures who pioneered this genre
All you Sci-fi lovers know about Flash, the superhero from the Marvel comic and movie series. Well, literature has its own version of flash too! Wait, but what’s that? All of you have read short stories and most you love them too. This is because they do not take up a lot of time, yet offer a good reading experience. What if we told you that there is something called short short stories? Yes, you read that right. In popular terms, this genre is known as flash fiction. There are various other names for this innovative genre, such as micro fiction, micro stories, short-shorts, sudden fiction, postcard fiction and nano fiction.
The exact nature of the flash fiction genre is still under debate. However, there are certain features that make it stand out. These shorts lay emphasis on the plot with a proper beginning, middle and end. The goal is to narrate a complete story in a condensed form. They are marked with brevity and have a clever twist or surprise at the end (often with the intention of turning the story upside down). Now that we have understood how this compressed short story format develops, let us focus on three of its pioneers.
Robert Shapard and James Thomas
Contrary to popular belief, the genre of flash fiction was not popularised by any single author, but by the editor duo, Robert Shapard and James Thomas. In the 1980s, the duo started publishing the series called Sudden Fiction that featured stories whose word count was less than 2000. Since then, the two-editor team has been publishing several flash fiction anthologies. Some of the notable ones are: New Sudden Fiction, Flash Fiction Forward and Sudden Fiction Latino.
Jerome Stern
Jerome Stern, the director of the creative writing programme at the Florida State University was another pioneer in developing the genre of flash fiction. In 1986, it was Stern’s initiative to introduce the World’s Best Short Short Story Contest across USA. His aim was to challenge aspiring authors to write a complete short story in not more than 250 words. Since then, every year, this competition has been conducted, and over time, the word limit has been raised to 500 words for the sake of the contestants.
Garson O’Toole
One of the most well-known flash fictions is a six-word story called Baby Shoes that reads: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” While the story is often credited to famous 20th century fiction writer Ernest Hemingway, it was later clarified by him in person that the due credit for this should go to an amateur author named Garson O’Toole who was otherwise a private investigator. Unfortunately, no other flash fiction has ever been attributed to O’Toole. However, needless to say, it was his effort that further paved the way for modern flash fiction.