Exhibit A

Dorothy Parker never did write the novel she spent half her life pursuing. O. Henry's only long work is "Cabbages and Kings", which is really nothing more than a collection of shorts linked together by location and characters. When was the last time a book club focused on either writer? Or on short stories at all, come to that?

And yet they are some of the most powerful — impactful — enduring works of literature. We all remember how "The Tell-Tale Heart" made us feel, the awful lesson of "The Monkey's Paw", and the way "The Gift of the Magi" brought tears to our eyes. Why don't we study them in the same way we do Oprah's latest pick?

There's a huge difference between short stories and full-length novels, and it's not just the number of words.

Novels present us with dozens of fully fleshed out characters, each of whom is going through their own uniquely complex situation. In the space of a few hundred pages, a huge number of conflicts can be introduced and resolved. Whole subplots come and go, carrying characters with them will-they or nil-they, and sometimes you can't even make out the overarching theme against the backdrop of all the events.

A short story, however, is a different animal entirely. Instead of a massive cast you meet but a bare handful of actors, only one or two of whom you ever get to know beyond the merest introduction. There's rarely more than one or two major occurrences, and even at the tale's climax there's precious little character growth.

Shorts can be just as powerful as any novel, mind you. They're smaller, but that just means what force they carry is concentrated. It's the difference between a windy day and a hard-swung hammer: One knocks leaves down all over town, while the other splinters bone and gets labeled Exhibit A.

What's true for a short story is doubly so for flash. Flash fiction is traditionally limited to under a thousand words — a five-minute read. It's a rare flash piece that has more than two or three characters, and there's usually only one conflict and resolution. But in order for it to get published, the people in it still need to feel real. It has to mean something to the reader.

To extend our metaphor about the wind and a hammer, that would make a flash piece... what, a scalpel? A dart, sunk in clear to the feathers? Flash can have quite the impact.

But then, I don't have to tell you that. You're the readers; I'm just one writer out of many. It's for you to choose what you like and why.

---

Subscribe!