Obviously, I can’t as founder, enter the first round of Bath Flash Fiction Award this year (it closes on Sunday 1st Feb with a word limit of 300. ), but I am currently writing for the National Flash Fiction Day anthology opportunity on the theme of bridges. Submissions there end on February 15th. So two February deadlines for your writing calendar coming up soon.

I need to make my story shorter to fit the limit of 500 words for NFFD so it got me revisiting an important flash fiction question. Does the story have a flash fiction trajectory, or should it be longer? Will it lose too much in the shortening? Or will it gain from hefty cutting? The NFFD anthology editors are Karen Jones and Sharon Telfer, both of whom have judged our Award, so they’ll be casting a sharp eye over submissions to the NFFD anthology to see if they are flash-worthy.

In her excellent guide book, Going Short, on the craft of flash fiction, Nancy Stohlman has written important chapters which help a writer make these decisions. In the chapter ‘Sculpting Prose: Seeing with the Master’s Eye’, she uses Michelangelo’s sculpting processs as a metaphor. She says ” approach your work with curiosity like a David trapped in a block of marble and trust that the story sits, fully formed, waiting to be released.”
In another chapter Nancy shows what cutting her own story twice revealed. First 248 words, then 127, then 67. It’s very interesting to see the differences between these three versions. She says you might not keep the shorter versions, but it will show if the story needs ‘a chip or chop or both”. She adds that in the cutting you may very well end up with two new stories instead of one.
If you haven’t got this book, you can purchase from Amazon.(it’s out of stock at adhocfiction.com) And she also made it into an audio book. .