Let me start by apologizing for this, um, “short story”?
Read the Shortest Murder Mystery here.
When I set out to write one short story per month, I really was thinking one short story (between 1K and 5K words), but this idea popped in my head and I just couldn’t get rid of it.
The idea of Flash Fiction has always been a bit intriguing to me. How does one convey a story in as few words as possible? It’s an interesting challenge, and I wanted to give it a shot.
So what to write about? Well, I’ve also always been interested in murder mysteries. A guilty pleasure of mine is definitely Agatha Christie stories, which for the most part are created so intrecately well that I just can’t get enough. Oh how I’d like to be able to write like that.
So ok, given the goal of this project is to flex my writing muscle, let’s try it: let’s write a flash fiction story with a murder mystery!
Only problem – how do you do that?
Seriously, how can you, in one sentence, develop mysterious and interesting characters, all with secret backstories and motives, put them in a situation where someone was murdered, and tease out the reveal of the murderer while everyone is at each other’s throats?
Well, quite simply, you can’t. At least not with that amount of detail.
What you can do, however, is write about someone writing a murder mystery. Say an author, who painstakingly takes the time to create all of these characters, weaves them together into a mysteriously murderous plot, all for the pleasure of the reader.
And just like that I had my flash fiction, not a murder mystery in the traditional sense, but rather the story of the author, who creates and then (regretably) kills the creations he lovingly put together for the purposes of entertainment. He is the true murderer.
Anywho, that’s what this all meant to me. I hope this makes sense, and that this additional text compensates for the shortness of the story this time around! See you soon.
Dan…