The Writers’ HQ Guide To Flash Fiction

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Short fiction

Conjure teeny flashy stories out of thin air

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Take This Course

Learn a HUGE range of flash fiction techniques and approaches in this comprehensive course
Get writing with story prompts, exercises, inspiration and a tonne of flashy examples
Join our super friendly online community for feedback and support

Are you ready to create some teeny tiny stories full of impact and truth and humanity?

YES YOU ARE! Come flash with us…

The Writers’ HQ Guide to Flash Fiction course contains a holy hand grenade of tips, tricks and techniques on crafting your own glorious little story nuggets, breaking all the rules (jk there aren’t any), editing your work, and even getting your writing published.

Join award-winning flash experts Kathy Hoyle and Jo Gatford as they take you through the fundamentals of flash fiction and teach you how to take the seed of a story idea and turn it into something spectacular. 

This frankly enormous course will show you how to harness story inspiration from quite literally anywhere; how to develop those ideas into tangible plot fodder; how to experiment with structure, characterisation and style; how to edit, develop and polish your work; and what to do when you’re ready to send your writing out into the big wide world… 

Backed up every step of the way with the most enthusiastically supportive flash fiction community around, you’ll have everything you need to expand your flash fiction repertoire and write a whole HEAP of stories!

22 steps in 7 sections

  • Welcome to the Writers’ HQ Guide to Flash Fiction

    • 1Week 1: Where the heck do I start?

    • What is flash fiction?
    • Yes, ok, but what IS flash fiction?
    • THIS is flash fiction

    2Week 2: Beginnings

    • Snippets of inspiration
    • Prompts, prompts, everywhere!
    • Developing an idea

    3Week 3: Middles

    • Building structure
    • Developing Character
    • Finding the rhythm

    4Week 4: Endings

    • The plot twist
    • Powerful endings
    • And finally, the title

    5Week 5: Editing

    • Death by a thousand cuts
    • Difficult questions
    • A final polish

    6Week 6: Going off piste

    • Breaking all the rules
    • All the best rulebreakers
    • Experimentation time

    7Week 7: Sending your work out into the world

    Another brilliant course!

    This course has really helped me look at how I write and how important every element is. Editing in particular! This is a course I will keep returning to, and get something different out of each time.

    Danielle L

    A great introduction to the genre

    Before I started this course as a complete newbie writer, I’d never heard of flash fiction. Now, to my own surprise, I’ve written three, and want to do more. It is a brilliant introduction to the genre and breaks down what could be a pretty overwhelming amount of information into manageable chunks.

    Emma C

    See your writing flourish

    The course has sharpened up my writing, making me a more concise and considered (less overly verbose) writer, which is a useful transferable skill to writing the novel and well as getting better at flash.

    Robert F

    Thank you Writers' HQ

    Thank you so much for giving me the confidence to send my work out ‘there’ and to all those wonderful people on the forum who give such amazing constructive criticism!

    Sarah G

    Truly inspiring

    An absolutely brilliant course that I will dip back into again and again. Truly inspiring. I’ve bought a new notebook on the strength of it!

    Steve D

    You need the famous Writers’ HQ newsletter

    Yes you do. Writing inspo, buttkicking, upcoming events and special offers, and the occasional bum joke. You know what to do – put your thing in the thing.