Short Stories

February 10, 2005 5:43 AM

Flash Fictionis a site which publishes short stories (under 1000 words). While the format (3 columns, not evenly filled) is a little annoying, the concept is interesting. My favorite story so far is 'A leaf falls', in the first column scroll halfway down the page. The site is maintained by a writer/ artist/musician, whose eventual aim is to print the stories on coffee mugs. Morning reading anyone?
posted by darsh (6 comments total)

Nice words and all, thanks for the post darsh, but please, will someone offer that person help in redesigning the site? :)
posted by LouReedsSon at 6:07 AM on February 10, 2005

Ack. They are in desperate need of a designer.
posted by effwerd at 6:14 AM on February 10, 2005

Sex to Jack, for as long as his memory, had been chopping down those naked lady trees. ...  Oh, the thrill of the power, the dominance, the manliness, as his strong arms whipped the axe into their very beings, penetrating the solidness of their bodies, sending them eternally to their knees.   Jack sure did love chopping down those trees.

Oh, the thrill! I sure did laugh reading this story.
posted by carmen at 6:32 AM on February 10, 2005

I'll just add my voice to the chorus of OMFG what a terrible hideous freakin design, but other than that, it looks like a cool idea. Thanks.

As to 'A leaf falls,' even after reading I'm not sure whether its title is meant as an homage to the famous E.E. Cummings poem. Unfortunately, while it's a nice little story, reminding readers of the poem highlights how overstated this is in comparison.
posted by soyjoy at 7:21 AM on February 10, 2005

No offense, but nearly all online (and many paper) magazines publish flash fiction or "sudden fiction" or "short shorts" these days. The first Web-mags that spring to my mind are Pindeldyboz, Word Riot, The Shore, Spoiled Ink, Opium Magazine, Zulkey, and at least three dozen others I can't think of at the moment. Some web-writers like Pia Ehrhardt and David Gianastasio have had dozens, if not seemingly hundreds, of short-shorts published online.

Flash fiction is a massive current trend, preying on short attention-spans and the tendency of people to read fiction online at work while multi-tasking. The 2005 Novel and Short-Story Writer's Market had an article on it, stressing "unfinished" endings so that the reader must finish the story and is left wondering at the end, although I think this technique is most often used as a crutch and rarely exploited as the art of intimating more than what is explicitly said.

Can anyone find the recent MeFi post criticizing short-fiction? I can't.
posted by Shane at 8:54 AM on February 10, 2005

Sorry, I guess that sounded pretty negative. I should have said, "If you enjoy Flash Fiction, you might also enjoy ..."
posted by Shane at 10:39 AM on February 10, 2005