Capsules of Wonder
Sara Hills on what makes flash fiction shine
Delighted to welcome Sara Hills today who has answered my flashy questions in preparation for judging the WestWord Prize, which closes later this month. Become a WestWord member and get free entry included as well as inspiring monthly workshops and craft posts and submissions to lots of our other competitions and themed editions.
Do let us know in the comments too what inspires you about reading and writing flash fiction.
Thanks to Sara for coming along and sharing her thoughts on what makes flash such a great literary form!
With love,
Sara, tell me what is it that you love about reading and writing flash fiction?
I love that flash fiction offers a totally immersive capsule experience for both writer and reader. It’s kind of a literary wonderland—the often poetic quality, the emotion, the movement, the layers, the innovation. It’s a joy to read flashes that have been crafted with such attention and care. And what a delicious challenge it is to try to pack everything a reader needs to know about a character, their physical and emotional world, the big questions of the human experience in such a small word count. It’s the stuff of magic, really.
As a writer, I particularly enjoy that each time I come to the page I’m presented with a new challenge to grow my writing. There is no upper limit; we can just keep growing—and how cool is that?!
Originally from the Sonoran Desert you now live in a small English village — do you think that has an impact on the stories you write?
I don’t think you can ever take the desert out of the girl. It’s often that formative landscape that I turn to first when writing. But after thirteen years, I’m more or less settled here in the UK. And a tiny village is a perfect microcosm— you get to know what people care about, their quirks and passions and concerns, the daily minutiae that incenses them or the ways in which they reach out to each other. The flood warnings pop up on my phone or ambulance lights flare through the windows and it hits harder because you know who’s at risk, how one life ripples out and affects a community. It has taken a while, but those voices and concerns are starting to make their way into my writing more and more in a way that I hope feels honest.
It’s not only insular here in a way that the desert wasn’t, the weather is oppressive in a different way, as well. I probably write about water a lot more than I would have otherwise. About farm fields or sheep or frost. Sometimes the local lingo sneaks in, and it can be very confusing when I’m writing an American-centred story and I’ve slipped into British spelling or some phraseology. I’m starting not to notice these things, which is where having astute critique partners is crucial.
How do you think flash offers the writer something different to longer short stories?
Because the word count is limited in flash fiction, there’s no room for exposition, meandering or lingering. There’s no time for intricate world-building. So it’s a great challenge for the writer to home in on what’s urgent or most meaningful, to see how much they can imply without saying outright, to focus in on one central image or metaphor, one white hot moment of change or elucidation.
Flash fiction also naturally lends itself more to experimentation, unique forms and voices (i.e. hermit crabs, triptychs, braided, breathless and dialogue only stories) that would be more difficult to sustain in longer short stories, and that can be really fun to play with. It allows the writer to push against all conventional restraints and notions that a proper story needs to have a beginning, middle and end. In flash fiction, we often start in the middle and leave before the end, but even that can be challenged. Can we have a story that exists only as a series of beginnings or endings? In flash fiction, absolutely anything is possible.
Flash tends to be full of conflict — can you recall one that made you laugh?
Humor is a tricky one. It’s so subjective, and I’m probably more of a chuckler than a laugh-out-loud person. I’m also a big fan of dark humor and absurdity, of stories that don’t take themselves too seriously and balance that humor with a deeper emotion, like in Amelia Fucking Earhart by Angela Allan in SmokeLong Quarterly.
You wear a lot of flash hats — award-winning writer of flash fictions and a flash collection; guest co-editor for National Flash Fiction Day’s 2024 anthology and you've judged competitions for Bath Flash Fiction Award, New Flash Fiction Review; and the Flash Fiction Festival, and been an editor for National Flash Fiction Day’s Flash Flood Journal and The Write-In since 2021. Can you tell us what makes a flash really resonate and stand out for you?
I love flashes that grab me by the heart and take surprising risks. Stories that know what they’re about, have a distinct voice and feel honest. An attention to language and concision are hugely important, but I’m also very much a fan of having a textural experience within a flash, including sensory details to communicate emotion. The best flash fiction stories are layered, both unique and relatable, with characters that feel fully-formed and endings that carry on off the page.
Who are the flash writers you really enjoy reading at the moment?
Oh gosh, there are so many exciting things happening in the flash fiction world right now. Lots of play and experimentation. Lots of risk-taking from both new and seasoned flash writers. It’s impossible to choose just a few standouts. However, when it comes to recently published collections, I’d highly recommend both Jude Higgins’ Clearly Defined Clouds (Ad Hoc Fiction) and Avitus B. Carle’s These Worn Bodies (Moon City Press) for their inventive and moving work.
WestWord Prize 2025
Deadline: 31st March 2025
Max word count: 1000
Entry fee: £10 submission only / £30 with feedback
Online anthology publication: June 2025
Theme: No theme
Prizes:
First prize: £400
Second prize: £250
Third prize: £100
Shortlisted: £25
Judge: Sara Hills is the author of The Evolution of Birds (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2021), winner of the 2022 Saboteur Award for best story collection. Her work has won the Bath Flash Fiction Award, SmokeLong Quarterly's Grand Micro Competition, Manchester Writing School’s QuietManDave flash non-fiction prize, National Flash Fiction Day’smicrofiction competition, and the Retreat West quarterly prize. She’s on the editorial staff at NFFD’s FlashFlood Journaland The Write-In, and her stories have been selected for Wigleaf’s Top 50, The Best Small Fictions, The Welkin Prize, and elsewhere. Originally from the Sonoran Desert, Sara lives in Warwickshire, UK and tweets from @sarahillswrites.
What is the submission price in U.S. dollars?