Flash fiction in the classroom

This article was submitted to "Educate", the magazine of the National Education Union



I run a project to encourage flash fiction in Worthing. It is called #worthingflash and it has a blog, a Facebook page and an email address I will share with you later. The blog has had 70,000 visitors at the time of writing.

There is an annual "100-word challenge" in which writers condense a story into, you guessed it, 100 words. It is very popular and has attracted writers from around the world.

Flash fiction is usually defined as a story of less than a thousand words in Canada and the USA. In the UK the limit is usually 500.

One thing that discourages pupils from creative writing is the sheer amount of words they need to write in an essay. Flash fiction can sometimes be the answer to that.

Another thing is the fact that the audience for their work is usually the teacher and occasionally the class. That is why school magazines are such a good idea. In addition, there are blogs and online magazines which will publish flash fiction.

There is no need to join Facebook to participate.

Work can be emailed to worthingflash@gmail.com and every contribution is considered. The best are published in http://worthingflash.blogspot.com. Pupils are usually adept at searching Google and they will find many other excellent flash fiction sites out there.


Derek McMillan



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