UTILIZE flash fiction or extremely brief narratives on social media to expose the human condition.
This was the message of writer Nadine Hendrikka Legaspi in her lecture at the Thomas Aquinas Research Complex auditorium last Feb. 14.
“A story can’t just be like, “Okay I put this on this table. This is just a story.” It has to say something more about the human condition,” Legaspi said.
Legaspi explained how flash fiction serves as an avenue for “disadvantaged people” in their “unfair world” to tell stories.
“If you just open your eye […], there is so much that you can write about […] and stories that need your telling,” she said.
Legaspi said “twitterature,” a 140-character story on Twitter, is one of the new platforms where young writers can tackle human struggles.
“Now, you can show [your story] in your own terms. It (Twitter) just give writers more opportunity to show the world what they’re thinking of,” she said.
The extreme brevity of flash fiction is not a hindrance to tell interesting stories, said Legaspi.
Legaspi is a recipient of the 2017 F. Sionil Jose Young Writers’ Prize, an English short story contest for Filipino writers 30 years old and younger.
The event, titled “Fleeting Verses: Flash Fiction Seminar and Workshop,” was hosted by the UST English Language Studies Society.
