In the Art of Brevity, Grant Faulkner, author of Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo (Chronicle Books, 2017) and the cofounder of 100 Word Story, guides readers through the inner workings of short fiction. Describing the book as a “meditation on the aesthetic of brevity,” Faulkner walks through the art of excision, compression, and breath that a writer will learn when creating stories of less than a thousand words. “The short form requires a deeper humility from the writer,” says Faulkner. “You’re writing not to draw attention to yourself, as some works do with verbal flourishes or stylistic panache, but to serve the story in all of its nuances, searching for exactly the right word to work in such a tiny space. A short-short exists on a different plane.” Among the twenty-four chapters in the book are: “The Freedom of Constraints,” “The Fullness of Omission,” and “Is It Poetry or Prose?” Each chapter ends with a writing exercise, inviting readers to try out all of the different forms of flash fiction and observe what elements truly matter in a story.
