News Flash: You Need to Write Less

Yes, I’m aware that the picture above is caused by long exposure not a flash effect, but Unsplash didn’t have any pictures of nekkid people in trench coats. 🤷‍♂️ I can only work with what I’m given.

One of the stacks I follow every day had a piece about her flash fiction and I shared it with some of my novelist clients … who were suitably horrified (as I expected). One of them expressed disbelief in anyone’s magical ability to produce moving fiction so brief.

Constraints are freeing to creativity. Learning to pack more meaning into fewer words is the forte of poets and ad copywriters. But it is a learnable skill.

Learning to choose the one perfectly detailed action over flooding the reader with prose description and exposition will empower you to pack more plot and story into your next novel.

This terse, laconic quality to your practice prose will expand your capacity to choose your words more carefully even when you can choose more.

The paucity of words in flash fiction will force you to practice more intentionality. Instead of a three thousand word scene that contains so many moving parts that you can’t keep them all in your head at once, very short fiction will enable you to see the whole structure of the story at a glance.

If you achieve the entire arc of change in one hundred and one words like Christy did, then you can do it a large piece, too. Try it!

You can’t hide in flash fiction. You know that the emotion is either there or it’s not … unless you’re better at lying to yourself than most people.

If you don’t feel the gut punch and cathartic release of emotion in your six-word story, then you make changes until you do.

Beginning in September 2026, several of my favorite peers and I will begin teaching a six-week scene writing bootcamp that we are affectionately branding as Scene Stormers. We will be discussing the well-known fundamentals of fiction writing that all the cool kids since Aristotle first wrote down that stories need a beginning, a muddle (my term), and an end in The Poetics and we will be giving you human-generated feedback on your scenes.

We (Scene Stormers) are currently assembling our curriculum and we will be publishing it all in advance, because (Spoiler Alert! ⚠️) there are no secrets in storytelling. The primary value that we provide to you (our customers) is the weekly discussions during the six-week bootcamp and the one-on-one human feedback on your writing every week.

📚 For the inaugural workshop, we’re using Hunger Games as our masterwork.

💝 Yes, you can bring us scenes from your work in progress. 💝

📅 If you’d like to be considered for our inaugural bootcamp in September, apply now. The inaugural cohort will only accept 20 writers … if you want to be in the one and only Mockingjay Cohort. We’ll review your application within two business days.

👉 Slots are filling up. If you’re interested, apply now. 👈

There are no secrets in storytelling.

·

May 26, 2025

Yes, there are secrets in story … but, no, there are no secrets in storytelling.

Anybody who says otherwise is both lying and trying to sell you something.

It can be hard to develop a new skill in isolation. If you’d like help, I’d love to chat about how I can help you. Book a free campfire chat and let’s talk about your storytelling story.

🍪 Paid subscribers get a free cookie invitation to a thirty-minute consultation with me about whatever they like every month. We can talk about whatever you like.

📅 Paid subscribers also get an hour-long unrecorded group deep dive conversation every month via zoom. In August 2026, we talked about implementing John Truby’s Four Corner Opposition in your novel.

In September, we’ll talk about the combustion phase of your scenes and novels and how to escalate them by design. In October, we’ll be singing the backstory blues and how to interview your imaginary friends and enemies.

Fine Print: 🤑 Teh FTC and other busybodies on the internet want me to warn you that I may earn a commission from affiliate links on this website. This means, if I’m a good boy, some company I link to may give me a penny or two. You have been warned.