Flash Fiction Chronicles

I thought I’d take a moment and discuss that dreaded foe of flash fiction: exposition.

Whether it’s the history of a country, the origin of a hero, a family tree, or the airspeed velocity of a European swallow, exposition is the basic facts behind a story. Exposition doesn’t have to be boring; on the contrary, how King Lillybeard III came to power is likely a fascinating story. The key is understanding when to cut the exposition, and when backstory is needed, make sure the story doesn’t come to a screeching halt. A flash piece can easily become a sudden info dump, leaving the reader wondering why the heck they just read all this information about a place in which nothing apparently happens, or a person who sits around thinking about history all day instead of getting of her duff and doing something.

This seems particularly to be a problem with fantasy flash. Fantasy fiction usually requires a lot of world building and establishing rules for places and systems that have been, for the most part, simply made up by the author. Science fiction can be the same way. Authors spend an immense amount of time coming up with these worlds and fantastic systems of magic or clever gadgets and complicated new political paradigms. And this is before a single pixel gets committed to screen. All this creative flavor informs the stories written within those worlds, and is a blast to invent. But is it necessary to give the reader all that information?

Most of the time? No.

Will people want all that history and setting exploration? If you’ve done a good job, yes. Hope they do – otherwise the world you have created may not be worth their time.

Nonetheless, resist! Flash fiction needs to be focused. You’re telling a particular story, about a particular moment in time, about just a few (heck, maybe even just one or two) particular people. Flash fiction is about distilling a story down to its absolutely essential ingredients. Those ingredients need to be the most potent spices on the rack. Determine what the story is about and keep it tightly focused on the characters and elements that add to that. Everything else is distraction.

Trust me, of all the criticisms you receive, “I want this to be a novel” will not be the one that leaves you curled up on the floor, with the weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Alexander Burns lives in Fort Worth, Texas. He writes because he doesn’t have a basement in which build robots or time machines. His work has appeared at Every Day Fiction and A Thousand Faces.