Flash fiction is a style of fictional literature or fiction of extreme brevity.[ 1] There is no widely accepted definition of the length of the category. Some se lf-described markets for flash fiction impose caps as low as three hundred words , while others consider stories as long as a thousand words to be flash fiction. One of the first known usages of the term "flash fiction" in reference to the li terary style was the 1992 anthology Flash Fiction: Seventy-Two Very Short Storie s. Editor James Thomas stated that the editors' definition of a "flash fiction" was a story that would fit on two facing pages of a typical digest-sized literar y magazine.[2] In China the style is frequently called a "smoke long" or "palm-s ized" story, with the comparison being that the story should be finished before the reader could finish smoking a cigarette. Other names for flash fiction include sudden fiction, micro fiction, micro-story , short short, postcard fiction and short short story, though distinctions are s ometimes drawn between some of these terms; for example, sometimes one-thousand words is considered the cut-off between "flash fiction" and the slightly longer short story "sudden fiction". The terms "micro fiction" and "micro narrative" ar e sometimes defined as below 300 words.The term "short short story" was the most common term until about 2000, when it was overtaken by "flash fiction".

Very short fiction has roots going back to Aesop's Fables, and practitioners hav e included Saadi of Shiraz ("Gulistan of Sa'di"), Boleslaw Prus, Anton Chekhov, O. Henry, Franz Kafka, H.P. Lovecraft, Yasunari Kawabata, Ernest Hemingway, Juli o Cortzar, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Fredric Brown.[6] Examples of Hemingway's pioneering of the form are the 18 very short pieces in h is first short-story collection, In Our Time. It is disputed whether (to win a b et), as alleged, he also wrote the flash fiction "For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Wo rn".[7] The 'short short story' has been particularly popular in science fiction and mystery genres since the 1930s.[citation needed] Hispanic literature has many authors of micro-stories, including Augusto Monterr oso (whose "El dinosaurio" is often credited as one of the shortest stories ever written[8]), and Luis Felipe Lomel ("El Emigrante"). In Spain authors of microrr elatos (very short fictions) have included Ignacio Martnez de Pisn, Andrs NeumanRamn Gmez de la Serna, Jos Jimnez Lozano, Javier Tomeo, Jos Mara Merino, Juan Jos Mills, a d scar Esquivias.[9] Italo Calvino consciously searched for a short narrative form, drawing inspirati on from Argentine writers Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares and finding that Monterroso's was "the most perfect he could find"; "El dinosaurio", in turn , possibly inspired his "The Dinosaurs".[10] In France and Francophone countries, micronouvelles have been popularized by aut hors such as Jacques Fuentealba, Vincent Bastin, Olivier Gechter, Stephane Batai llon and Laurent Berthiaume.[11] In German, authors of Krzestgeschichten, influenced by brief narratives penned by Bertolt Brecht and Franz Kafka, have included Peter Bichsel, Heimito von Dodere r, Gnter Kunert and Helmut Heienbttel. In the Arab world, the famous Naguib Mahfouz is one of the most able flash ficti on writers. After the years of silence that followed him being stabbed twice in the neck, Mahfouz was unable to maintain his memory and use his hand. Accordingl y he resorted to mastering flash fiction. He wrote some of the most astounding s hort stories before his death using this technique. US AUTHOR ERNEST HEMINGWAY WAS FAMOUSLY ECONOMICAL IN HIS STYLE. He was once cha llenged, supposedly for the price of his bar bill, to write a complete story in only six words. Hemingway rose to the challenge brilliantly: For sale: baby shoes, never worn. The science fiction writer, Frederic Brown, is also credited with writing one of the shortest stories ever, though in truth his 1948 story, Knock, goes on to de velop a plot from the story that is introduced thus:

The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door . . . A complete story in itself. Knock inspired a response by Ron Smith, who gave his story a tongue-in-cheek title that was almost as long as the story itself. He c alled it A Horror Story Shorter by One Letter than the Shortest Story Ever Told, and it goes like this: The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a lock on the door . . . Augusto Monterroso was a Guatemalan writer who devoted himself almost exclusivel y to short stories, many of which were very short indeed, but none as terse as h is El Dinosaurio: Cuando despert, el dinosaurio todava estaba all. which translates as: When he awoke, the dinosaur was still there. The Canadian author, Margaret Atwood, equalled Hemingway for brevity with her fo rthright six-word story: Longed for him. Got him. Shit.