The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock at the door.Here's another variation of The World's Shortest Horror Story:
He sat alone in the dark, afraid. Someone put matches in his hand.These are extremes. Typically, the following sizes are used: microfiction (under 250 words); flash fiction (under 500 words) and short-short (under 1000 words).
It has the space of a joke or an anecdote. (An obvious under-theme resonance to the above would be “... Who's there?”)
But flash fiction is not a joke, it is arduous and high quality literature, which requires some skills to be developed.
In contrast to a poem, though rhyming is not required and the focus is on traditional prosaic attributes: theme, subjects, plot, conflict, suspense, response, even high concept.
See also
- Flash fiction, Wikipedia
- The Essentials of Micro-Fiction, Camille Renshaw
- SmokeLong Quarterly, a great flash fiction online magazine
- Gertrude Stein, Three Lives
- Abstract Prose, Time Magazine