I’m currently taking part in a multi-week flash fiction challenge/contest. For those who don’t know what flash fiction is, it’s basically a super-short story length. For the contest I’m in, the length is limited to 750 words or less. Most short stories are generally a few thousand words, so the word length constraint is significant. I’ve so far written three stories, and a few things are becoming clear. One is that I’m not very comfortable at writing this length. While …

One of the things that I find interesting is how various writers achieve their prose effects. How does Cormac McCarthy achieve such deep emotional resonance using spare prose? How does Gene Wolfe use a slight twist in meaning of various words to create a sense of time and place without using description?  These are the kinds of things that fascinate me. These are also the things that are seldom taught in writing books or classes, but they are important, incredibly …