I love luxuriating in a well-built world. When I'm reading a sci-fi or fantasy novel, I'm always a fan of the cozier scenes when the characters are exploring their world, and I can absolutely get sucked into descriptions of the history or technology, even when they're not actively moving the plot forward. There's a energy in getting to know a fantastical world. It's a lower-key energy than what's generated by plot movement but it can still be enough to keep a reader invested in something like a novel, where you don't need the pace to be consistently quick.
With short fiction, worldbuilding becomes more of a challenge, especially if you're using a completely secondary world. It's especially challenging when you're working at a flash length and really don't have any extra words to spare, though I would also say there's one advantage to having an under-1,000 word constraint: you're less likely to have info dumps because there's simply not space for them. When you're working in the 3,000-8,000 word range, the temptation to info dump is strong.
I’ve had some somewhat contradictory reading experiences of late. On the one hand, I’ve read several wonderful short stories in a fairy tale or folklore tone that inhabit a vague and floaty world in a beautiful way. On the other, I’ve written a few different feedbacks for After Happy Hour submissions where one of my major issues was a lack of grounding—that the world felt too floaty, to the point I couldn’t picture the world the characters were inhabiting.
The right level of worldbuilding and description is a tricky balance to strike for writers in any genre, and I think particularly so for those in speculative worlds. Not every type of story lends itself to lush, lengthy descriptions, either. In some modes, sparse details are a defining characteristic of the genre. Stories that stem from an oral storytelling tradition tend to fall into this category, which includes genres like folklore and fairy tales. Mythic voices give more flexibility for detailed descriptions, but even so it can break the effect to spend too many words grounding the reader. There are other genres that need this kind of deft hand, as well. Magical realism is one example—the rules of the world need to be established enough that the reader isn’t confused, but if you explain too much then it can lose the “magic” part of the name, or start to read like a different type of fantasy.
What's especially challenging about fairy tale writing is that a vaguely defined setting is a common genre trope. Fairy tales often take place somewhere “far away” and “once upon a time”, intentionally placed outside of a historical context. There are exceptions to this rule, of course, but the more solidly a story is tethered to reality, the less like a fairy tale it seems.
Literary genres in general can be confusing to navigate, especially once you get into the convoluted quagmire of speculative subgenres or the oddly specific categories for romance. The “punk” subset of genres is one that I find particularly head-scratch inducing. I often think I understand a term only to see someone use it in a way that makes me question whether they (or I) actually know what it means. It doesn't help that “punk” takes on a different meaning when it's being used in a cultural, stylistic, or musical context.
I have to give the usual caveat for a post like this, which is that genre definitions aren't set in stone. That's even more true with genres that were recently invented, like a lot of the punk subgenres. That being said, here's a run-down on the various literary flavors of punk, and how they relate to the term in a broader sense. So, to kick things off...
Read this if you like: The Wheel of Time, David Eddings, character-driven high fantasy
tl;dr summary: Three magic users in a world where magic is dying set out to avert war, solve a murder, and avoid bringing about a prophecied doom.
Writing flash fiction in any genre is hard for me. I love a well-built world, a complex plot, a big cast of characters—all things that are tricky to fit into any short story length, much less in 1,000 words or less.
This is also what I’ve come to love about writing flash fiction, though. It’s a valuable exercise in focus and economy of language. Any flash story is condensed in some way, but that’s especially true for fantasy, sci-fi, or historical—any genre where you need to establish a world the reader doesn’t know yet. It takes a deft hand to immerse someone in a new reality, introduce them to a character they care about, and give them an actual plot to follow, without letting the story sprawl beyond a flash piece’s limited real estate.
I generally don’t concern myself with genre divisions as either a writer or a reader. When I’m looking for things to read, I want to spend my time with realistic characters inhabiting an immersive world—and, beyond that, I’m not too picky. I take the same approach when I’m writing. Whatever conventions and ideas fit a story are the ones that I’m going to use, even if that means pulling from multiple genres, or ending up somewhere in between them.
At least, until I get to the point that a story is finished and I’m trying to find a home for it. Then, the question of what genre it belongs to becomes more pressing. While there are a number of markets that accept any flavor of non-realistic fiction, others have a tighter focus on one genre or the other and I find myself forced to answer the question: just what do I call this weird thing that I’ve created?
