Icy Sedgwick has an interesting blog post up, discussing the recent prevalence of drabbles and other shorter pieces among online flash fiction. It's worth reading, whether you write flash or merely enjoy reading it.
I tend to think of a flash piece as a thousand words or fewer. There was a time, when I was more dogmatic than I am now, when I saw that ceiling as absolutely unbreakable. Now, I will let my stories roll up above that if I feel they need the room. I will also let a story be complete in only a few hundred words, if that's what it wants to be.
It's possible that the longer ones needed to be edited down and the shorter ones needed to be fleshed out. Perfection is a process, not an endpoint.
Here are the word counts for FridayFlash stories I wrote in the latter half of 2011:
And here are the word counts for my FridayFlash stories written so far in 2012:
Do you see any trends?
Update: I graphed out the story lengths of all my FridayFlash stories since the first one appeared on September 9, 2009. Aside from a flirtation with rather short pieces in the fourth quarter of 2010, they tend to be around 800 words on average. Longest was 1442 words, shortest was 64 words.
Interestingly, although I haven't missed a week since posting that first story, this data set is clearly incomplete, since the dates are off at the end. I write & edit in yWriter first, then copy over to Blogger. It seems there were some stories I typed directly into Blogger, which I then failed to copy back into the yWriter file I use to keep everything organized.
I wonder which stories they were?
===== Feel free to comment on this or any other post.
I tend to think of a flash piece as a thousand words or fewer. There was a time, when I was more dogmatic than I am now, when I saw that ceiling as absolutely unbreakable. Now, I will let my stories roll up above that if I feel they need the room. I will also let a story be complete in only a few hundred words, if that's what it wants to be.
It's possible that the longer ones needed to be edited down and the shorter ones needed to be fleshed out. Perfection is a process, not an endpoint.
Here are the word counts for FridayFlash stories I wrote in the latter half of 2011:
 |
| Click to enlarge |
And here are the word counts for my FridayFlash stories written so far in 2012:
 |
| Click to enlarge |
Do you see any trends?
Update: I graphed out the story lengths of all my FridayFlash stories since the first one appeared on September 9, 2009. Aside from a flirtation with rather short pieces in the fourth quarter of 2010, they tend to be around 800 words on average. Longest was 1442 words, shortest was 64 words.
 | |
| Click to enlarge all that graphical goodness |
Interestingly, although I haven't missed a week since posting that first story, this data set is clearly incomplete, since the dates are off at the end. I write & edit in yWriter first, then copy over to Blogger. It seems there were some stories I typed directly into Blogger, which I then failed to copy back into the yWriter file I use to keep everything organized.
I wonder which stories they were?
===== Feel free to comment on this or any other post.
I see clusters of four-digit stuff, but that's about it. One hopes you're just allotting the number of words each story needed.
ReplyDeleteAlways. I write the story, then look at the word count later. I don't try to fluff out short pieces with unnecessary words just to make the 1000 word mark.
DeleteOf course, I never think ANY of my words are unnecessary...
The only thing I see is that clusters of short pieces follow clusters of long ones. No long-term trend. What's your overall average?
ReplyDeleteExcel says the average is 834 words.
DeleteNot sure of the source of the variation pattern. Maybe after I write a longer one, I want to change it up with a set of shorter ones? Maybe I only have one really good idea each month?
Or maybe one group takes more energy to write than the other kind, and your idea hamster shifts gears to take a rest?
DeleteI don't think "good" ideas have a set word count. Like you, I think the story itself says how long it is.
Tony,
ReplyDeleteSo, to play Devil's Advocate, if your Wednesday Limerick needs a sixth line to really be complete, do you add it?
I am not nearly as prolific as you are, but I do keep to the 1,000 word maek fairly rigidly. There are only 2 stories I can think of that went over. one I still regret (and often contemplate re-doing as a serial) and the other was intentionally over for April 1st. Isn't part of the discipline of writing a Flash piece cutting the story to the barest minimums and having to not such much learn the harsh art of editing so much as embrace with logophobic glee?
Please understand this is more a thought for discussion, but I am curious if those pieces well beyond the 1,000 word mark can still rightly be described as Flash. They are still stories, they are still awesome and I look forward to them every Friday, but are they still Flash Fiction?
Thanks and all the best,
Paul
That's one of the points at issue, I think. A limerick has a specified form, which, if you deviate from the meter, rhythm or schema, gets you snippy notes from the Poetry Police. I know, because I've gotten those letters.
DeleteBut flash? The FridayFlash FAQ defines this as "1000 words or less". My >1000 word pieces are technically over the line. Some of them *needed* to be 1100, 1200 or 1400 words; some of them probably could have done with some editing to pull them back in.
Just as you say, the harsh art of editing is the key to good writing. Have I just gotten lazy? Or are these stories more expansive, and I want to allow them to unfold completely?
I can tell you, though, that for the "Best of Friday Flash" anthologies (and I'm an associate editor for both volumes), the 1000 word limit is hard and fast.
My own rule of thumb is that once I hit about 800-900 words, I look at the piece and decide if it really needs to be expanded into a proper short story. (Most of the time the answer is no.) Cool graph :-)
ReplyDeleteI've had some pieces that got expanded into longer stories, into sequels, and (in two cases) into 50K NaNoWriMo novels. One of them is now at 90K, and will be ready for beta readers by the end of the month.
DeleteI'm glad you like the graph!
From the start the #FridayFlash guidelines said, "Write and polish a story of 1000 words or less (don’t sweat it if it’s slightly over)." Flash fiction is short fiction. Absolute word counts vary based on what the target publication calls for and is generally thought to be about 1000 words or less. The real reason it keep the story short is to avoid losing readers. A lot of readers will scan a page, and if they see it runs on and on just decide, "Later," and later may never come.
ReplyDeleteAnother interesting study you could do, Tony, is to see how many comments you get or how much time-spent-on-page varies based on length. Might be interesting.
I take my own advice. I do shoot for 1000 words or less, but if I go slightly over it, I don't sweat it. Of course slightly is subjective. For me, once it gets over the 1200 word count I have a hard time considering it flash fiction. Sometimes a story's gotta be what a story's gotta be.
~jon
I looked hard at the two stories that rolled up to 1400 words, but decided to let them stand, since I don't make a general practice of pushing the ceiling that way.
DeleteI find that the number of comments aren't really related to story length. They are much more dependent on reciprocity - if I've read and commented elsewhere, people come and read mine.