Why I decided to write this book.
There are not many books written about genre fiction—romance, historical fiction, fantasy, science fiction, horror, and thrillers. These genres are often overlooked in favour of literary fiction.
Oh, and the applause from the gallery when a literary author dips their toe into the genre category!
I read everything—back of cereal packs, flyers, blogs, novels, Booker Prize-winning books, newspapers, academic papers, and science fiction. And I believe, whisper it, as a book lover, you have the most fun when reading genre fiction.
The unashamed action and adventure, the lifelong torturous loves, the death, cheating, revenges, the chases, the fights, the spills, the sex, the gore, and the death.
Great genre fiction takes you by the hand and yanks you into a world of its own making, where, as a reader, you can lose yourself for an hour, a day, or in the case of a series, several weeks—or indeed a lifetime.
As a writer and judge of short-short story contests (the Farnham Flash Fiction Competition is now in its 7th year and has had over 1,000 entries), let me tell you a secret: In short-short story contests, genre fiction entries are in the minority. And don’t get me wrong, it’s complicated to get genre fiction to work in 500 words or fewer. But when it does work, it’s spellbinding. Flash fiction at its best normally has a twist in the tale—so violent, so unexpected. It’s like a turning car spinning on its axis in a doughnut. Genre fiction is the writing style with the largest number of tools and tricks at its disposal to deliver the most jaw-dropping twists in the tale.
So, I have written this book to set out how genre fiction should work in flash fiction. I offer you guidance on how to world-build in a couple of sentences, details of character types you can fall back on, and common tropes readers know well so that you, as a writer, can subvert them. And, as always, lots of exercises and other plots to motivate your writing.
Let’s get started.
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