Welcome to the Flash Fiction group! I hope you will consider joining us. Please note that this group is open to all writers, even if you have never tried writing flash fiction before.

Just to give a quick introduction, my name is Ana Cristina and I've been a member of Protagonize since December 2008. I am an English teacher to high school students and I enjoy writing poetry and short prose pieces in my spare time. I first learned about flash fiction on the now defunct writing community, Ficlets.com. It was love at first write for me, and I've been writing primarily flash fiction ever since. I look forward to seeing where this workshop will go.

Here's a quick rundown of what you can expect to see as a member of this group:

- discussions on the technical aspects of writing flash fiction
- writing assignments to help hone your skills
- monthly writing contests (100% friendly, natch)
- regular intelligent critique of established flash fiction pieces
- regular constructive criticism on our own pieces

What else would you like to see included in this workshop? Let me know in the comments! In addition, feel free to go ahead and give a brief introduction of yourself so we can get to know you a little better. :)

Ana Cristina

@smac972 Flash fiction pieces differ from vignettes in that they contain all the principal story elements: a protagonist, conflict, and resolution, whereas a vignette may be missing one or more of these elements and ultimately leaves more unwritten. A vignette is also sometimes referred to as "snapshot literature." It gives the reader a brief impression of something without filling in the blanks the way a flash fiction piece would.

Great question, smac! :) I hope I answered it for you.

@Tasha_Noble Thanks! :)

@smac972 This is an okay site for examples: http://www.onlineflashfiction.com/
Ficlets.com has recently been reincarnated into Ficly.com, which are stories of 1,024 characters in length.

I've got a book that has great examples, but unfortunately it is in my classroom at school ... and I'm on summer vacation ... D'oh! But as soon as I remember the title, I will let you know. :)

@Tasha_Noble I tend to write much shorter pieces than 1,000 words. I'm more in the 200-500 word category, so yeah, I will include challenges for shorter pieces as well. One-page fiction is tough as nails to do, but it can make for some interesting stories. :)

@ABStarns rambleness is a fine and decent word. I'm looking forward to the challenges, too! :)

@Ratius I'm waiting for the stories tab to go live before I announce any competitions. Groups are releasing content based on a phased approach. To learn more about that go here: http://blog.protagonize.com/2009/04/20/a-preview-and-a-retrospective

In the meantime, you're more than welcome to contribute a flash fiction piece in my Writing Exercise discussion post: http://blog.protagonize.com/2009/04/20/a-preview-and-a-retrospective