Craft and Theory

Learn literary techniques from some greats of literature. Explore essays on flash fiction, minimalism and dirty realism, go deeper with writers who left their mark on the form.

How AI Is Changing the Way Writers Write
Essay
How AI Is Changing the Way Writers Write

A working writer who built a literary website using AI on what the tools can and can’t do at the sentence level. Not the ethics argument. The craft argument.

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Why the Best Novels of 2026 Are Under 200 Pages
Essay
Best Novels of 2026 Are Under 200 Pages

The most praised literary fiction of 2026 is short. From Keegan to Fosse, what the economy of style does to the length of a novel and why the 80,000-word contract is finally dead.

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What Is Flash Fiction? A Complete Guide
Definition
What Is Flash Fiction?

Everything you need to know about the compressed short story — form, history, word counts and where to start reading.

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How to Write Flash Fiction
Practical Guide
How to Write Flash Fiction

The specific techniques that make compressed short fiction work. Not rules — tools. For writers who want to cut without losing the story.

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The Iceberg Theory — Hemingway
Technique
The Iceberg Theory

Hemingway’s most cited and most misunderstood idea. What it actually says and how it applies to flash fiction.

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Foundations · What the forms mean

Explore thoughts and ideas on writing from different angles.

What Is Flash Fiction? A Complete Guide
Definition
What Is Flash Fiction? A Complete Guide
Everything you need to know about the compressed short story — form, history, word counts and where to start reading.
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 How to Write Flash Fiction
Practical Guide
How to Write Flash Fiction
The specific techniques that make compressed short fiction work. Not rules — tools. For writers who want to cut without losing the story.
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 What Is Dirty Realism?
Definition
What Is Dirty Realism?
The American literary movement behind Carver, Ford and Wolff. Blue-collar lives, spare prose, quiet devastation.
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 What Is Sudden Fiction?
Definition
What Is Sudden Fiction?
The term that predated flash fiction. Its origins, its anthology, and what it tells us about the short-short form.
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 Flash Fiction vs. the Short Story
Comparison
Flash Fiction vs. the Short Story
Not just length. The structural, tonal and emotional differences between the two forms — and why they demand different things from a writer.
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 Prose Poetry vs. Flash Fiction
Comparison
Prose Poetry vs. Flash Fiction
Where one ends and the other begins. The grey area between lyric and narrative, and how to know which you're writing.
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 What Is Nomadic Writing?
Definition
What Is Nomadic Writing?
Writing produced in transit, in borrowed rooms, in cities you're passing through. The practice and the tradition behind it.
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 What Is Autofiction?
Definition
What Is Autofiction?
The form between memoir and fiction. What autofiction is, who writes it, and why it is the dominant literary form of our time.
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 The Best Flash Fiction Collections of All Time
Reading List
The Best Flash Fiction Collections of All Time
The collections that defined flash fiction. From Hempel and Carver to Machado and Adjei-Brenyah. Start here.
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Essays · Go deeper

Try to get story craft and work into the modern world.

Writer at desk with books
Essay
How AI Is Changing the Way Writers Write (and Why Most of the Panic Is Wrong)
A working writer who built an entire literary website using AI on what the tools can and can't do at the sentence level. Not the ethics argument. The craft argument.
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Why the Best Novels of 2026 Are Under 200 Pages
The most praised literary fiction of 2026 is short. From Keegan to Fosse, what the economy of style does to the length of a novel and why the 80,000-word contract is finally dead.
Read → Reading List
Five Books That Will Make You a Better Writer
The books that taught me more about writing than anything else.
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Post-Minimalism — What Came After Carver
The minimalist moment peaked in the 1980s. What happened to the stripped sentence after Carver's death, and where compressed fiction went next.
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Post-Flash Fiction — Where the Form Is Going
Flash fiction has been mainstream for twenty years. What is it doing now, what are the interesting writers doing with it, and where does it go from here.
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What George Saunders Teaches Writers
His MFA, his essays, his practice. The specific things Saunders says about compression, empathy and the sentence that works.
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The Flash Fiction Workshop — Paste Your Draft
Submit your flash fiction for analysis: compression score, style notes, ending critique. A practical tool for writers working on the form.
Try it →Guide
How to Write Flash Fiction: A Practical Guide From a Working Writer
Compression, endings, the first line, and what to leave out. From twenty years of practice.
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What Is Magical Realism?
A guide to the form — definition, key writers, and how the technique works on the page.
Read →Publishing
How to Get Published in Literary Magazines
Where to find journals, how to submit, and how to handle the rejection that will definitely come.
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The Best Flash Fiction Examples: Twelve Stories Every Writer Should Read
A reading list of the finest flash fiction ever written, with notes on what each story does and why it matters.
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How to Write a Short Story Opening: The First Line and Everything After
How to open a short story so the reader cannot stop. Voice, withholding, and the question the first sentence must ask.
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Technique · How the craft works

Miss the detail? Read insights and articles.

The Iceberg Theory — How Hemingway's Omission Works
Technique
The Iceberg Theory — How Hemingway's Omission Works
Seven-eighths of the story is underwater. What that actually means in practice, and how to use it without losing your reader.
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 Show Don't Tell — What It Actually Means
Technique
Show Don't Tell — What It Actually Means
The most repeated piece of writing advice, and the most misunderstood. What it means in flash fiction specifically.
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 How to End a Flash Fiction Story
Technique
How to End a Flash Fiction Story
The ending is everything in short fiction. How to land it — the resonant image, the withheld beat, the quiet devastation.
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 How Long Should Flash Fiction Be?
Technique
How Long Should Flash Fiction Be?
Word counts, form constraints, and what length actually does to a compressed story. The numbers and what they mean.
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 Why Minimalist Fiction Is Harder to Write
Technique
Why Minimalist Fiction Is Harder to Write
Taking things out is harder than putting them in. The discipline, the doubt, and the specific skill of leaving blank space.
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 Hemingway vs. Carver — The Real Difference
Comparison
Hemingway vs. Carver — The Real Difference
Both minimalists. Both working class. Both obsessed with what's left out. But the difference between them is the difference between two worlds.
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 Six Ways to Break a Line
Technique
Six Ways to Break a Line
The villanelle, sonnet, haiku, prose poem, beat poetry, free verse. What each form demands and who does it best.
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A series of influence – 10 writers who shaped the form

Check out cool essay and thought shares by gifted writers.

Raymond Carver
Raymond Carver
Dirty realism, the working class sentence, omission as form.
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 Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
The iceberg theory, the declarative sentence, what's left unsaid.
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 Amy Hempel
Amy Hempel
The master of the compressed form. Grief held at arm's length.
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 Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
The indirect method, subtext, the scene that changes nothing and everything.
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 Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Interiority, the moment of consciousness, prose as perception.
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 Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
The labyrinth, the infinite, the short story as metaphysical argument.
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 Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
Bureaucratic dread, the parable, the sentence that turns on itself.
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 Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Failure as form, the fragment, language at the edge of meaning.
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 Grace Paley
Grace Paley
The political and the intimate, voice as character, the short short.
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 W. G. Sebald
W. G. Sebald
Memory, displacement, the essay-novel, the photograph as rupture.
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