What is it about flash fiction—consisting of bite-sized stories you'd find on blogging sites and even social media platforms—that attracts everyday readers and writers alike? Here, we kickstart an article series that revisits the Creatinuum podcast by offering a retrospective on one of its episodes, entitled "Great Things, Small Packages: On Flash Fiction."
Photo from Pixabay
From one-stanza poems, screenshots of fake text dialogues, and short stories that are only a couple of paragraphs (or even sentences) long, to hashtags and social media accounts dedicated to posting writing prompts for the eager author—flash fiction is everywhere and has continued to touch and entertain readers who crave those quick bites of fiction whenever they scroll through their phones.
It's such an accessible genre in that anyone can write for it without the pressure of prepping months' worth of story outlining or lore creation. If you have a quick piece you think is worth posting and sharing to the world, simply type it out as a social media post or, better yet, use an eye-catching photo as the background of your text and upload it on an image-friendly platform such as Instagram. Flash fiction comes in all shapes and forms, and as long as you use the right hashtags, your story is sure to reach your intended audience.
Still, some would argue that writing short stories is trickier than penning a full-length novel, maybe owing to the challenge of choosing the right words to make the best story possible without making it longer than it needs to be. After all, flash fiction creators may still be constrained by limited character counts or photo dimensions. Nonetheless, it's a challenge that these same writers are eager to tackle, especially on social media.
In the podcast episode, we mentioned that flash fiction rose with the boom of access to the Internet (around the early 2000s), granting everyone the means to write what they wish to write and post it on their personal websites (e.g., Myspace, Livejournal). That still holds true, although the means have changed over time—from independent blog posts to short tweets and images, even video clips (e.g., Instagram reels and TikTok posts today). Needless to say that this genre isn't as young as people think, which could be a testament to the creative drive of writers in the face of limited or as-yet-undeveloped tools.
We also brought up the charm of writing prompts in the form of hashtags or posts that flash fiction writers eagerly jump onto, and a great example is #RP612, where, on Independence Day in the Philippines, Filipinos post fanfiction related to the works of national hero Jose Rizal. Other great examples include #Ham4Halalan, where Filipinos reimagine scenes from the musical Hamilton in the Philippine context, and #ManilaEncounters, where they spin surreal horror stories around the everyday lives of Metro Manila residents. Again, the sky's the limit for flash fiction enthusiasts.
That being said, for all sorts of writing groups, art communities, and fandoms, what sort of shape will flash fiction take in the future? As the "Energizer bunny" (our words on the podcast) of fiction genres, will it continue to thrive and evolve, especially given today's looming threats of AI-generated text and online plagiarism? Will it eventually fizzle out as a genre or prevail as an art form for everyone to enjoy? Our belief is that as long as people feel the need to write and have the means to do it—whether it's straight from their phones or from the comfort of their desks—flash fiction will keep doing what it does best: delight readers and motivate writers from every corner of the Internet.
Listen in full to Creatinuum Episode 4 - Great Things, Small Packages: On Flash Fiction available on Simplecast, Spotify, Apple and other platforms.
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