Flash Fiction: Your Hook

/ harmonykentonline

Hello SErs! Harmony here. I hope this finds you all well. Today, we are embarking upon the first of a four-part post on writing flash fiction; that is, stories of 500 words or less. I will link back to each part in subsequent posts for ease of reference. As most of you will know by now, I am a dyed-in-the-wool pantser and only do the bare minimum of outlining. Having said that, I have found the following method so useful for tightening up my writing and getting in the essential beginning, middle, and end in stories this brief.

After reading Mae Clair’s excellent post on Creative Tools (which you can find HERE), I went ahead and bought myself a Storymatic set. Any of you following my blog will have seen some of the short fiction I came up with from the prompts. I have five complete stories and one in progress, as well as flash fiction in progress. So far, the completed stories add up to 20,400 words. All this from four prompt cards. What these give you is a character and a problem or desire and a setting. It is up to you what you do with them from then in. Not being a planner, these prompts suited me down to the ground.

More recently, I came across a great formula for writing very short fiction, and that is what I bring to you here. Well, it’s a mix between the story prompt method and the outline method. I hope you find it useful. In the past, I would just start writing, and I might start anywhere. When I have a few-thousand words to play with, that’s fine, but it isn’t so easy when it comes to keeping your count below 500 words.

The essential elements of flash fiction are:

  1. Length of story (between 500 and 1000 words)
  2. Character development
  3. Surprise or twist
  4. Change or epiphany

 

So, in this first part, we look at the bit before beginning to write your story. You need a character who wants something. You’re giving the reader a character they care about (either love or hate!) who desires something but has a problem getting it. First of all think of some different characters. I give examples of some of mine here:

(Storymatic prompts for character … Person who takes shortcuts and a person who needs to remove a tattoo right away) = I came up with …

Groom

And from some ideas without prompts … Kidnapped Teen

Psychopathic Counsellor

Sociopathic Author

Now think about what they might want or need. A helpful exercise can be to think about what you most desire and what you might do to get it. What might stand in your way? Now think about someone you don’t like … what might they want? What might they be willing to do to get it? Think of nice people and nasty, vicious people … what might they desire? Here’s some I came up with …

Love, respect, relief from pain, to lose weight, a holiday, have fun, to mean something, money, fancy car, fame, power, prestige, wealthy early retirement, drugs, safety, control, invulnerability, super-powers, survival, to inflict pain, hide behind busyness.

My list has …

Groom = wants to get to his wedding

Kidnapped Teen = survival

Psychopathic Counsellor = To inflict pain

Sociopathic Author = Fame

Okay, that’s it for this post. Next time, we look at problems and interruptions, where a problem hinders your character getting their desire. And you get to write your story beginning. Have fun!

CLICK TO TWEET

Harmony Kent

30 thoughts on “Flash Fiction: Your Hook”

  1. Pingback: Flash Fiction: Resolution | Story Empire

  2. Pingback: Author Inspiration and This Week’s Writing Links – Staci Troilo

  3. Pingback: Cooler Weather, Bob Seger, and The Week in Review – Joan Hall

  10. This is excellent, Harmony. I too am a pantser, but that brings some issues from time to time as far as keeping up with details. But, with flash fiction, there isn’t time enough to get bogged down with heavy details. It’s hitting the main points and moving on to the conclusion. I loved the points you outlined in this post. Very helpful!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  11. I write short stories twice a week on my blog. I have confined my efforts to 100% dialog. Without being heretofore too conscious of my method I discovered in your post the elements of flash fiction which set a more formal parameter as a guide. I look forward to your further posts on this subject.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  12. It’s been years since I experimented with flash fiction so this was a fascinating post, Harmony. Love how you put it together.
    And thanks for the shout-out to my post. So glad you’re finding the Storymatic useful!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

We'd love to know what you think. Comment below.

Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s