BECAUSE of readers’ shorter attention spans, writers should challenge themselves to explore flash fiction, an award-winning Filipino-American author said in a lecture organized by the UST Center for Creative Writing and Literary Studies (CCWLS).
Flash fiction, often confused with short stories due to its brevity, takes a “hybrid form” as it infuses the elements of a short story with the lyricism of poetry, science fiction writer Veronica Montes said in the seminar “Wording New Worlds: Science Fiction in Filipino-American Literature” held on Jan. 17 at the Tanghalang Teresita Quirino of the Benavides Building.
“I was initially drawn to flash fiction because I thought that writing something very short would be easy,” Montes said. “I was so wrong! It’s a challenging form, and it requires close attention to craft.”
Montes also underscored the importance of word choice flash fiction, considering the smaller word count expected of the genre.
“When [a] flash [fiction] writer chooses the right image, the perfect metaphor, the most impactful word, it unlocks the imagination of an engaged reader,” she said.
Montes said that regardless of the genre a writer chooses to explore, they must “fill themselves up” by reading and observing so they would have a “wealth of resources from which to draw.”
Montes is the author of the flash fiction chapbooks “I’m Not Lost” and “The Conquered Sits at the Bus Stop, Waiting,” which won in the Black Lawrence Press’s Spring 2019 Black River Chapbook Competition.
She also wrote the collection of short stories “Benedicta Takes Wing & Other Stories” and is a collaborator in the dugtungan novel “Angelica’s Daughters.”
“For better or worse, our lives are increasingly busy, and phones have greatly decreased our attention spans,” Montes told the Varsitarian.
“In this landscape, I think flash fiction can serve as an invitation to literature that is both accessible and inviting,” she added.
Her lecture is part of the CCWLS Visiting International Writers and Scholars Series, a series of seminars and lectures by foreign writers.
