Talk:Flash fiction

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Am I the only one who can't see the relation between the fiction made on Flash section and the main part of the article? ~ Mccow28

Sorry, I didn't realize at first which part you were referring to, before I added the section below on Macromedia Flash. Phrenq 16:13, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

There seem to be more external links than actual content in this article, which leads me to believe its mostly advertising. Anyone want to help me pare down the list? Shy 17:53, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree... the last several edits are just people adding external links. It seems most of them violate the spirit of the External link guidelines as well as what Wikipedia is not. The list should be pared down to just a couple appropriate links. Any suggestions? Phrenq 17:20, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

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Can anyone find evidence that Ernest Hemingway actually wrote that six-word story about baby shoes? --Justallie 21:11, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

So just change it and make it by another author. Look here for inspiration http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/sixwords.html. Butterflyvertigo 19:23, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=28;t=001014;p=1 has more discussion. It's a good question, but it doesn't look like anybody else is claiming to have written it. Maybe he just never found anyone willing to pay him to print it. Ojcit 04:53, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Merge from Short short story (and microfiction?)

I've suggested the Short short story stub be merged into Flash fiction, as it is largely just another word for the same concept. In fact, I don't believe there's really anything to do, other than add "short short story" to the list of alternate terms in the first paragraph. Any opinions? Phrenq 14:52, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree there's considerable overlap in these terms and no clear consensus on just how many words constitute a flash or a short-short. The only procedural consideration of any consequence in a merge might be deciding which term users are more likely to search. Davidbdale 01:27, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Should consideration be given to merging "flash fiction" and "short short story" with "microfiction"? The three concepts do seem closely related. Personally, I would tend to favor "microfiction" for the common name. But whichever name were selected, links would guide readers from the remaining names to the common article. logologist|Talk 05:28, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, there's no need to worry about broken searches because the merge procedure includes adding a redirect from the old term to the new one. I agree that it's probably a good idea to merge microfiction as well. I'll mark microfiction as suggested to be merged.
As far as which is the appropriate common name, I'm going to vote for flash fiction, as it seems to be the more commonly used term. A google search (though hardly definitive, I still think it's a reasonable measure of zeitgeist) backs me up:
- Phrenq 14:30, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Did you also check for "micro-fiction," with a hyphen, and for "micro-story"? logologist|Talk 15:12, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Well, Google includes hyphenated words when you search for words separated by a space (even with quotes), so that's included in the previous link. As for "micro story" OR microstory, that search returns 51,300. None of them are on the same scale as the 700,000+ results for flash fiction.
Anyway, I want to be real careful not to imply that a google search is the authoratative source for which is the correct term. I just wanted a quick gague of which seems to be the more popular one, and google is good for that. Another term might be more appropriate for reasons other than popularity. I just can't think of any. Phrenq 16:06, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

There really is no significant difference structure or style-wise between a Short Story and Flash Fiction. Flash Fiction emerged as a subclassification of the short story meant to designate very short works that 1-2000 words approximately (but no real number has been established to my knowledge).Blueskelton 07:29, 4 March 2007 (UTC)Blueskelton

[edit] Macromdia Flash

I have doubts about the paragraph that begins "Recently, a new twist on this form has appeared within short fictions written for the web that are created entirely in Flash", which refers to multimedia stories presented using the Macromedia Flash player. I've never heard of this referred to as "Flash fiction", and none of the sites referred to appear to use this term, so this description may not belong in this entry. Anyone have a source for this usage? Phrenq 12:37, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

The Flash Player (and application) post-date the original use of the term "Flash Fiction." This suggests that a partial updating of this term may be in order, as we have seen with other etymologies of terms in current usage. Would it be appropriate to leave in the paragraph referenced above simply to show that the term has multiple possible meanings, particularly with the emergence of new technologies? (Added by sm81email on Nov. 26, 2006)

My problem with this is that I can't actually find any usage of the term "Flash Fiction" that refers to macromedia flash, other than in this article. It would seem to have much more in common with, say, Hypertext fiction. Perhaps we should use the otheruses4 template, like this:
This page is about very short stories. For interactive multimedia stories, see Hypertext fiction .
Might that be appropriate? Phrenq 16:42, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree that there is no current usage of the term "Flash Fiction" in reference to the creation of new, usually short, fictions using Flash. However, hypertext is an old(er) form, predominantly created in HTML, and predating current technologies. It is a bit of a puzzler--hypertext doesn't really apply, and Flash fiction already has a stable reference base. If you don't mind, I'm going to let you run with this one? (Added by sm81email on Dec. 7, 2006) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.23.184.95 (talk) 01:26, 8 December 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Market Relevance

Pretty frequently, links are being added to the sentence on markets specializing in flash. Can we set some sort of standard of relevance, similar to what's used in the literary magazines article? The standard there is 40,000 google results. In that case, it probably needs to be that high (or higher) because of the scope of the article. In this niche, a lower threshold might be appropriate.

Examples:

  • Flash Me Magazine: 1,290 (this was just added to the article, and is the impetus behind this post)
  • SmokeLong Quarterly: 30,700
  • Vestal Review: 16,100
  • Flashquake: 28,600

I'm not sure what the threshold should be. I'd have suggested 20,000, but that leaves out Vestal Review, which is a very well established market. 15,000, perhaps? DaveClapper 13:55, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Maybe just the biggest three: when you add one to the list, you must remove one that gets fewer Google hits? (We may run into a problem if there's a flash-fiction magazine whose name means other things as well, but we can cross that bridge when we come to it.) —RuakhTALK 19:27, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
I have a problem with saying that Google hits are what determines relevance. If that were true, then Britney Spears (9+ million) would be more relevant than Indira Ghandi (49,000).
That aside, I think that at the very least Every Day Fiction and Flash Me are relevant enough to be included in the article. Flash Me already has its own article, so its relevance must be high enough to maintain that. Also, Ruakh points out the problem with multiple meanings -- "Flash Me" the magazine is a very difficult thing to tease out of the various hits that come from a search on "Flash Me". Every Day Fiction is doing something completely different from the other 'zines, and -- if we must discuss Google status -- gets 14,000 some-odd hits. Flash Fiction Online is unique in being the first pro-paying flash 'zine that emphasizes genre fiction, but if people have heartburn with it, we can leave it out until it's bigger. Jdfreivald (talk) 21:40, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
While I understand your citation of Ghandi versus Spears, that's a case that isn't specific to entities that exist primarily online. In this case, all of the publications being cited DO exist primarily online, so Google is a very reasonable source. If you'd like an even more relevant source, perhaps Duotrope would suffice? Here are the number of submissions tracked there over the past 12 months for each of the publications being discussed:
  • SmokeLong Quarterly: 191
  • Flashquake: 144
  • Vestal Review: 103
  • Flash Me: 85
  • Every Day Fiction: 82
  • Flash Fiction Online: 22
As of right this moment, the three pubs originally listed in the article have the highest level of relevance, according to both Google and Duotrope. Previous editors thought it made sense to limit the number of publications listed as examples of markets to three to avoid the article becoming a links list. There are other articles on Wikipedia which serve the purpose of lists without diluting more tradtionally written articles. You're welcome to disagree, but at the moment you're alone in pushing for more than three. I wish you all the luck in the world with FFO (the more markets that exist and thrive, the better for all markets, in my opinion). And if FFO (or either of the other two) surpass SLQ, FQ, or VR in relevance as agreed upon by editors here, then by all means, they should replace the least relevant cited in that sentence. I'm going to revert again. If editors come to a different conclusion based on this discussion page, so be it, but for now, I think the article should reflect what has previously been agreed to.DaveClapper (talk) 05:33, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] origin of term

Could someone add info on the origin of term and when it was first used? Because I don't really consider it an actual literary genre -- it's not a term used in university literature classes, is it? It sounds simply like an outgrowth of the internet, and then retroactively applied to things that aren't really so-called "flash fiction" but merely short short stories. The term is, in my opinion, clearly a cyber-term, and hence I think it needs some sort of history or authentication if it belongs in Wikipedia. Softlavender (talk) 09:01, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I would prefer the term "micro-story." Nihil novi (talk) 10:35, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
Personal preference is fine, but micro-story isn't recognized as the name of the form to nearly the degree that flash fiction is. (See the discussion above under "Merge from Short short story (and microfiction?)".)DaveClapper (talk) 18:44, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
If you look in the section "Other Names," you'll see:
The term "flash fiction" likely originated in James Thomas, Denise Thomas, and Tom Hazuka's 1992 anthology of that name. As the authors of that anthology said in their introduction, their own definition of a "flash fiction" was a story that would fit on two facing pages of a typical digest-sized literary magazine, or about 750 words.
While the internet certainly existed in 1992, it wasn't the driving force in defining the form. The internet has absolutely expanded the audience for the form, as the length seems better-suited to the attention spans of surfers than does the more traditional short story form.
As to whether it's a term used in university literature classes, I can't speak definitively to each university setting, but I know it's covered in several places. Robert Shapard, one of the current editors of the Flash Fiction anthology series for W.W. Norton, is a professor in the writing program at the University of Hawaii, for example. (He's the best example, but I can cite others.) Flash fiction has also generated several panels at AWP (The Association of Writers & Writing Programs) conferences in recent years. That an organization such as AWP, which specifically represents university writing programs, recognizes flash fiction to the point of hosting panels on it during its national conferences would seem to belie the idea that the term isn't used in the university setting. I might agree that it's not in wide use in university literature classes, which tend to focus on older writing, but in university writing classes, which obviously focus on contemporary writing, the term is in wide use.
Regardless, I'll check the section I cited above to make sure that it references the actual book in question, and if it doesn't, I'll add a citation accordingly.DaveClapper (talk) 18:41, 20 February 2008 (UTC)