Intro to Flash Fiction

Surprise the Line presents a special one-time guest workshop led by experienced writers on a topic of their choosing every first Saturday of the month. This month, you are invited to try your hand at flash fiction!

Flash fiction and poetry share a few things in common: a short condensed form, high intensity, and a focus on brevity and language. Whether you are a poet, fiction writer, or anyone simply interested in giving it a go, please join us for a fun and productive writing session.

What You’ll Get From This Workshop:

• An orientation and definition: What is flash fiction?

• The four basic building blocks of all fiction (both short and long fiction)

• How to think critically about flash fiction

• 1-3 first drafts of your own flash pieces!

• Tools to generate further writing ideas of your own

What We’ll Do Together:

Before the start of the workshop, you will receive 4 sample flash fiction pieces chosen by the instructor, written in 4 different styles. The goal is to read them to find out what we like in our own writing and to discover our own voices. In addition, thinking objectively about these stories will help us fine-tune our ability to think critically about our own stories and to revise and edit our own stories.

In the workshop, you will receive options for 3 writing prompts to generate your own flash fiction pieces, including time to write. At the end, we will have time for students to share what they have written. What is read out loud will not get critiqued, but students and instructor can give brief positive feedback, and highlights to encourage each other.

NOTE from the instructor: If we do not have time in the class to read all of the student’s first drafts, and the students wish to have their work read, I will make myself available via email to respond to work they created in the class.

About the Teacher:

José Enrique Medina (aka Henry) writes poems, flash fiction and short stories. He started writing in this genre 33 years ago even before it was called flash fiction. He loves flash pieces because they are mini-journeys that can take readers on a full gondola ride in the space of just a page or less. His flash fiction has appeared in Best Microfiction 2019 Anthology, The Los Angeles Review, Tahoma Literary Review, The Burnside Review, and many other publications. He earned his BA in English from Cornell University, has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations, is a Voices of Our Nation fellow, and enjoys raising chickens.