Wheaton News

Professor Bryant explains microfiction and the connection to well-written memos

The first sentence plunges deep into the heart of the story: “When Greta got home from the supermarket her husband was on fire.”

The remainder of Professor of English Deyonne Bryant’s story “Firebirds” traces a marriage from romantic past to troubled present, relaying its conflicts and codependencies in telegraphic prose. Published earlier this year in the magazine The Blood Pudding, the story illustrates the appeal of flash fiction.

At its most basic level, flash fiction—and related terms such as microfiction and sudden fiction—is defined by length, or rather the lack of it. Flash fiction may be up to 1,500 words in length; microfiction does not exceed 250 words. Bryant’s story consists of just 200 well-chosen words.

Because of its brevity, flash fiction relies on precise word choice and skillful use of literary devices, such as metaphor and symbolism, said Bryant, the Samuel Valentine Cole Professor of English and Mary Heuser Chair in the Arts.

“The way that I explain flash fiction to the students in my classes is that you want to combine the conciseness, compression and immediacy of poetry with the narrative drive of fiction,” she said. “You’re borrowing from both genres to try to create a short piece of fiction that captures a moment.” And the moment the author chooses is important, she added.

Bryant discovered flash fiction in graduate school, and she has returned to it regularly ever since, relishing the challenge of its strict limits.

“I like to write about people who are experiencing complex emotions or involved in complex relationships and what is the essence of that. So that’s how I kind of approach it, always asking the question: If you could boil the story down to one thing about that relationship, what is its essence?”

She also appreciates the emphasis on craft that comes with such short works. “Part of the art lies in choosing the right moment to capture in the story—the high point or turning point of a narrative,” she said.

While scholars trace the short fiction form back to classics such as The Canterbury Tales, Bryant said it has become a more widely practiced form largely for economic reasons. “Flash fiction has gained popularity over the past few decades for a very practical, pragmatic reason: magazines began cutting back on the length and number of short stories they published because they no longer had the budget for very long 20- to 25-page stories.”

Bryant chooses to teach flash fiction in her creative writing workshop for similarly practical reasons: the brevity of the stories allows student writers to focus on developing their craft rather than struggling for weeks to finish longer pieces.

“It gives students a sense of success because they turn in a new story every week,” Bryant said. “More importantly, they improve their writing skills and techniques through practice. You can see their growth over the course of the semester.”

Those skills, she said, are transferable to other forms of writing, such as a business memo. Start by stating the main point as briefly as possible and rely on active, concrete language to explain your idea, she said. “The goal is to get to the point, using language in a skillful and intentional way, knowing what you want to say and how to say it,” Bryant said.

Former students tell her that their colleagues at work would benefit from the class. “One of my former students keeps saying to me, ‘You ought to come offer a workshop to my boss and co-workers.’ He says that the practice in learning to compress information and get to the point quickly is valuable in the work he does now.”

Interested in reading more on flash fiction? Professor Bryant offers the following:

Editors who renewed interest in the flash fiction form:

• Sudden Fiction International: 60 Short-Short Stories (1986), edited by Robert Shapard and James Thomas
• New Sudden Fiction: Short-Short Stories from America and Beyond (2007), edited by Robert Shapard and James Thomas
• Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction (2009), edited by Tara Masih
• Life is Short–Art is Shorter: In Praise of Brevity (2015), edited by David Shields and Elizabeth Cooperman

Flash fiction authors Professor Bryant has read and recommends:

• The Long and Short of It (1999) and Getting to Know the Weather (1985) by Pamela Painter
• We the Animals (2011) by Justin Torres