Flash fiction – a fictional work of extreme brevity that still offers character and plot development.

Categories:

Six-Word Story: telling a full story in only six words.

Twitter Story: These super-short stories consist of 140 characters or less—the amount that can fit in a
tweet.

Dribble: A 50-word story is called a “dribble.”

Drabble: A 100-word story is called a “drabble.”

Other names for flash fiction include “sudden fiction,” “immediate fiction,” “nanofiction,” and
“microfiction.”

Characteristics:

1. Brevity. Flash fiction compresses an entire story into the space of a few paragraphs.

2. A complete plot. A flash fiction story is indeed a story, with a beginning, middle, and end.

3. Surprise. Great flash fiction often incorporates surprise, usually in the form of a twist ending or
an unexpected last line.

HOW TO WRITE A FLASH FICTION?

 Start in the Middle

 SHOW DON’T TELL
 Leave Things Unsaid
 Use Fewer Characters
 Concentrate on a Theme
The 21st Century Reader

 grew up using technology as a primary learning tool

• is capable of navigating and interpreting digital formats and media messages

• possesses literacy skills which include technological abilities such as keyboarding, internet
navigation, interpretation of technological speak, ability to communicate and interpret coded
language and decipher graphics

21st Century Literature

 New literary work created within the last decade

 Written by contemporary authors
 Deals with current themes/issues and reflects a technological culture
 Often breaks traditional writing rules
 Emerging genres like IM and blog format books, digi-fiction, doodle

Literary Genre – a type or category of literature. It has a specific form, content, and style. The four main
genres of literature are poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and drama. Under each of those genres are different
genres. For example, fiction includes speculative fiction, fantasy, and science fiction.

Literary Technique – a literary device deliberately used by a writer to convey a specific idea or meaning.
An example is motif, an object or idea that is repeated in a literary work. Another literary technique is
the use of figurative language, an example is personification, a figure of speech in which an inanimate
object is given human qualities.

Illustrated Novel – presents images that tell some parts of the story, while the other parts are told in
words.

Graphic Novel – tells a story in comic book format.

Doodle Fiction – contains doodles and hand-written graphics.

Slipstream, or the “fiction of strangeness,” features elements of fantasy, science fiction, and serious
fiction. For many, works of slipstream are difficult to categorize because of their similarities with
speculative fiction. The collection Philippine Speculative Fiction, edited by Dean Francis Alfar and Nikki
Alfar, contains stories that are slipstream fiction.

Slipstream describes fiction that falls between "mainstream" literature and the fantasy and science
fiction genres (the name itself is wordplay on the term "mainstream"). Where science fiction and fantasy
novels treat their fantastical elements as being very literal, real elements of their world, slipstream
usually explores these elements in a more surreal fashion, and delves more into their satirical or
metaphorical importance. Compared to magical realism the fantastical elements of slipstream also tend
to be more extravagant, and their existence is usually more jarring to their comparative realities than
that which is found in magic realism.
Metafiction – is about fiction itself. A work of metafiction can be a story about a writer who writes a
story or a story about another work of fiction.

Some works of metafiction by Filipinos are the novel Ilustrado (2010) by Miguel Syjuco and Hari
Manawari (2011) by German Gervacio.

Metafiction occurs in fictional stories when the story examines the elements of fiction itself. For
example, a story that explores how stories are made by commenting on character types, how plots are
formed, or other aspects of storytelling is engaged in an example of metafiction. Metafiction can be
playful or dramatic, but it always forces the reader to think about the nature of storytelling itself and
how fictional stories are made.