When they fired the first volley he was sitting down in the water with his head on his knees.Īfter his matter-of-fact opening, Hemingway folds back the layers until that first sentence takes on an entirely new meaning by the end. Finally the officer told the soldiers it was no good trying to make him stand up. The other five stood very quietly against the wall. They tried to hold him up against the wall but he sat down in a puddle of water. Two soldiers carried him downstairs and out into the rain. One of the ministers was sick with typhoid. All the shutters of the hospital were nailed shut. There were wet dead leaves on the paving of the courtyard. There were pools of water in the courtyard. They shot the six cabinet ministers at half-past six in the morning against the wall of a hospital. This story from his collection In Our Time follows the typical arc of great flash fiction by starting with a straightforward but descriptive sentence to set the scene.
“ For sale: baby shoes, never worn” is far from Hemingway’s only foray into flash fiction ( if it was indeed his story). Here are seven examples of flash fiction (for a total of 21 minutes or less) that are totally worth your time. The best part? It won’t take more than three minutes to read them.
Remember, this is a style of writing so short (most cap it at 1,000 words) and so accessible that some have deemed it “Twitterature.” For every half-baked stab at micro-fiction in your Instagram feed, though, there’s a masterful short short story out there that you probably haven’t read yet. Sign up for our newsletter to get submission announcements and stay on top of our best work.įlash fiction is many things: hilariously difficult to categorize confusingly known as “microfiction,” “short shorts,” “minisagas,” “dribble,” and “drabble” and sometimes, even dangerous.īut great might not be the first word that springs to mind.
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