Flash fiction is a very short story, typically under 1,000 or 1,500 words and often far briefer. It aims for completeness of effect within extreme compression.

Every word must carry weight. Exposition is minimal; implication does the work of fuller development. A successful flash piece still offers character, conflict, and a sense of change or revelation, yet it does so in a space that might otherwise hold a single scene of a conventional short story. The form has flourished online and in magazines that prize brevity. It rewards rereading because so much is suggested rather than stated.

Flash fiction differs from a vignette or prose poem by retaining a narrative arc, however compressed. It differs from a sketch by aiming for a finished emotional or intellectual impact. Writers of flash must master implication, precise diction, and the art of the resonant ending.

A complete story told in a handful of paragraphs is flash fiction.