The Art of Brevity
Crafting the Very Short Story

A handful of gems, here, which I will gladly accept. The Flashpoint exercises were often fruitful and fun activities, and I enjoyed the more critical looks at examples and observations on the topics by other writers. Yet when I finished, the book overall felt not what I hoped for. Ironically this di......more

An extremely useful guide to writing flash fiction. Lots of useful references so will be following up on them. Definitely one to reread slowly and thoughtfully.......more

A Short Book on Tiny Stories with Massive Impact As a longtime NaNoWriMo-er and lover of Grant Faulkner's Pep Talks for Writers, I was overjoyed to get a copy of The Art of Brevity. To be honest, I had no idea what it was about—I just knew I wanted to read it because I love Faulkner's work. The big su......more

As someone who moderates a monthly writing group at our local library, I am always impressed by my fellow writers who can do well with the short story medium. My best success has been with those that float at about ten pages or so. I have not, however, been able to master the one-to-two page variety......more

Is brevity an inescapable characteristic of contemporaneity? Yes. New communication systems (nowadays phones, internet, but possibly going back to the telegraph and similar) → exponential increase in production and sharing of material → competition for attention by tending to brevity. Yes, the bad:......more