Visit Twitter or Facebook on a Friday (or many writers’ blogs and websites any day of the week) and you may be hard pressed to not stumble upon references to #fridayflash, the biggest Twitter trend to flow through writers’ circles since Twitter began.  But what is it?

To put it simply, it’s a way of getting people to notice your shorter stories.  The basis of the trend is that on a Friday, people will post some flash fiction (a story up to 1000 words in length) to their website, blog or wherever, and then post a link to it on Twitter.  So that people can find these stories easily, you’re supposed to append the #fridayflash hashtag to the end of your Tweet.  At its most basic level, there’s nothing else to it.

Of course, with every community comes a certain number of rules but with #fridayflash there’s only really two:

• Don’t post explicit erotica; and
• Don’t post gratuitous violence.

In essence, just remember this is a family-friendly thing, and play nice.

What next?

Of course, this being the Internet, things don’t have to stop there.  Once you’ve posted your story, there are several things you can do.  First of all, there’s reading other peoples’ work and commenting on it.  This gets you known in the community as a team player, and also gives you a chance to experience the work of some really talented flash fiction writers.

Leaving a comment is a good thing, because it shows you’re willing to give back to the community.  Don’t just write something like “hey, that’s great! come and read my work!” because we all know that’s spamming.  Leave a constructive comment (constructive criticism is okay but don’t go overboard) and if there’s a field to put a URL in, feel free to link to your site.  Just don’t do it in the main body of the comment unless everyone else is.

The Friday Flash Collector

There is a website dedicated to keeping a Master List of all #fridayflash stories, and you can add your work to this list, too.  Just pop over to The Friday Flash Collector and click on the ‘Insert New Item’ button, then enter the necessary details.

What’s the advantage of this?  Well, it’s simple really: Twitter is a fast-paced social medium where any discussion can soon be drowned out; so soon after you’ve told everyone about your story, it will be lost in the sea of other people talking about stories.  The Collector keeps track of all the flash fiction posted for #fridayflash so everyone can find it quickly and easily.

So there you have it: social media promoting writing and community spirit at the same time.  #Fridayflash has to be one of the coolest writing trends to hit the Internet in a long time and if you want to get involved, you’ll be very welcome.  Just post up your flash fiction (remember to spell check and keep to 1000 words or less), fire off a link to it on Twitter and you’re in the club.

See you on Friday for the word party.

Tags: #fridayflash, Stories, Twitter

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 18th, 2010 at 00:12 and is filed under #fridayflash. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.