I hope many of you will or have checked out last Friday’s Flash Fiction story here on my blog. Writing flash fiction helps to strengthen a writer because you have to be able to tell a story in as few words as possible, so it helps writers learn how to really tighten their writing. Writing flash fiction also allows writers to explore other genres. All writers tend to write one or two genres of long fiction, but often wonder what it would be like to write a different genre, or just want to play in another genre, and flash fiction is the perfect outlet for that.

I’ve been writing the Flash Fiction Friday posts for almost a year now, and in all honesty, I have been disappointed that more people haven’t “liked” or “commented” on my flash fiction posts. As a writer, I really want to engage my readers, and I really want to know what you like and/or don’t like because that also helps me be able to improve my writing.

When I first began writing my Flash Fiction Friday posts, I did so because I saw them on Melanie Noell Bernard’s blog (she doesn’t do them anymore), and decided I wanted to try writing flash fiction too. I even left some comments on her flash fiction blog posts to which she responded to encourage me and offer me some tips. She, however, liked to leave her endings open, allowing readers to use their own imaginations to finish the story, which I thought was kind of cool.

However, friends and family, who have read my flash fiction posts and spoken to me about them face-to-face, have expressed dissatisfaction with incomplete endings. Then I began to run out of ideas for flash fiction posts as well. So, I did a little online research about flash fiction, and what I have read is that the actual rules of flash fiction say that flash fiction is to be a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end.

I’ve also been reading a friend’s blog, who has been writing flash fiction posts all centered around an interesting character she has created. Each flash fiction post is, indeed, a story in itself, but continues to follow the lives of this one character and his coworkers, and often, new, minor characters are introduced in one particular story.

Therefore, after studying more about flash fiction, I decided to try to try writing flash fiction that follows the rules, but I struggled for ideas, and I thought that if I could come up with an interesting character, like the friend mentioned above, that I could write flash fiction stories about, I might be able to come up with some good, fresh material. I continued to think about it, and I suddenly got an idea.

So, I have created a character who had her first adventure last Friday, and each week, she will have a new adventure. I hope you will read about Amelia Merchant and her adventures and don’t be afraid to leave comments telling me your thoughts. I welcome them!