Writing Flash Memoir is great exercise for writers. I’ve been experiencing this in my own writing and editing and in the classes I have been teaching online and in-person. Getting to the point and writing tight while still relying on details to move the reader into the story and move the story forward to its poignant, surprising, or thoughtful ending is what writers need to learn to do in scene after scene.

Sarah White, founder of the website True Stories Well Told defines Flash Memoir as a genre that is:

• Free of preambles—They start at the flashpoint—the moment when conflict ignites tangible action that drives the story forward.
• Scene-based—They frequently take place in one run of time, without jumping around.
• Observant—They tend to feature not the “I” but the “eye.”
• Insightful—Like a flashlight illuminating a dark corner, they explore something that provoked an insight.
• Specific—They stick with concrete, observable events and actions rather than abstract concepts.
• True—As a subgenre of creative nonfiction, Flash Memoir must uphold the nonfiction contract that what is reported actually happened.

Here are four links to flash memoir published on the True Stories Well Told website. Read them and consider how they embody the six attributes White delineates:

• Balloons Are for Kids
• Racial Tension, Indianapolis 1968
• Not Enough Time!

Think about how each one accomplishes a mission and keeps the reader well situated in the occasion upon which the speaker is speaking.

I’ve shared this next flash story before, but having used it as a model in a recent seminar, I wanted to share it again. It is not only a story but also instruction on how to tighten your prose (and why):

Exercise by Bruce Taylor

Take a story from real life, one you are having trouble focusing. Cut the story in half. Cut it in half again. What you’re left with is the essentials of the story you will be able to see more clearly.

(259 words)

They have said nothing to each other for weeks except what matters to the day, the children, the budget or the dog. He is upstairs at his office window. She is reading in a chaise longue in the shade some book her recently widowed mother gave her. She sighs, he imagines, at how it was an easy mistake for a young girl to make, a less likely error, perhaps, for a man so much older.

Who remembers mostly a white dress, a waist your hands could fit around, the scent of Juicy-Fruit and Noxzema. When he asks what’s wrong, she always says she’s happy; the only thing is, if he were sometimes a little happier a little more often too…

What she thinks of him now he doesn’t even know, but fears it’s so much less than what she thought at first, when he was what he can’t imagine now, and obviously isn’t to her now, and why and why? In the grief of his fifties, hard liquor sits him down to pray.

They treat each other as tenderly at least as they’d treat a relative or friend, a needy stranger or the obligatory guest. Whatever it is they might be discussing escapes to the underside of the birch leaves in the gathering breeze. The lights across the river are brighter and seem more distant than the stars. The swallows give way to the bats and a tiny spider spins at the ruined screen a web someone less desperate might be tempted to take as a metaphor.

(130 words)

They have said nothing to each other for weeks except what matters to the day, the children, the budget or the dog. He is upstairs at his office window. She sighs, he imagines, at where love has led her and how it was an easy mistake for young girl to make.

He remembers a white dress, a waist your hands could fit around, the scent of Juicy-Fruit and Noxzema — he wants to ask her what she remembers.

They treat each other as tenderly at least as they’d treat a relative or friend, a needy stranger or the obligatory guest. Whatever it is they might be discussing escapes to the underside of the birch leaves. The lights across the river are brighter and seem more distant than the stars.

(64 words)

They have said nothing to each other for weeks except what matters to the day. She sighs at where love has led her. He remembers a white dress. They treat each other as they’d treat a stranger. Whatever they might be discussing escapes to the underside of the birch leaves. The lights across the river are brighter and more distant than the stars.

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How might you use this exercise to write tight and discover the most important words in your writing?

Here’s an idea of how you might approach this:

1. Start with an idea that concerns a conflict — one a person is having with another person or pet or thing or one a person is having with herself about how to take an action or change her behavior.
2. Put the person who is conflicted in a scene that illustrates the situation of the conflict. This could be as mundane as having to untangle the cord on a vacuum cleaner when the phone is ringing or wash a pet that doesn’t want to be washed. Or, the conflict can be deep and hurtful and scary: being a whistleblower or having to defend a friend or colleague or a child against false charges. This scene can be true in spirit if not in real life if the speaker in the story tells the reader the scene is imagined so she can work out a real problem.
3. Then do a word count, which should be from 300 to 1000 words and do what Taylor does in his piece, “Exercise.” Halve it again and then again. See if the scene grows in its impact.
4. Write yourself a note about how you decided which words could be forfeited and how that helped the writing. It might become part of the flash memoir piece you wrote or one of its own.

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I hope you will add a comment below on how the exercise felt to you and what you accomplished doing it.