4 flash non-fiction techniques you can use to write compelling content

“The brief essay… needs to be hot from the first sentence, and the heat must remain the entire time… The heat might come from language, from image, from voice or point-of-view, from revelation or suspense, but there must always be a burning urgency of some sort, translated through each sentence, starting with the first.”

Dinty W. Moore - The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction

A brief intro to flash non-fiction

You've all read great content. Maybe it was a novel on the beach, a poem at college, or a news article on a train.

You've all read boring content, too.

And if I were to ask you why one piece of content enthralled you while the other made you decide to do something else, you might not be able to put your finger on it.

The difference usually comes down to technique. Writing techniques are not only for story-telling and creative writing but also for crafting captivating non-fiction.

Today, the genre of writing we'll explore is something called flash non-fiction, which is one of my favourite kinds of content to read or write. Common forms of it are short-form essays, memoirs, and factual writing.

The flash refers to speed. Brevity is the bedrock of flash writing. Most published flash content is between 300 and 1,000 words, but it can vary anywhere between 100 and 2,000 words.

Yet there's more to this style of writing than length. Flash content straddles the line between poetry and long-form non-fiction, and it’s one of the most compact and powerful genres out there.

Want an example? Here it comes (a short essay called “First Bath” by Sonya Lea), along with some flash techniques you can use in your own writing.

4 flash non-fiction techniques

1. Don't start at the beginning or with the obvious

Beginning in the middle of a scene or story is a common technique in flash fiction, but it can make for really captivating non-fiction, too.

There's an excellent example of this technique at work in “First Bath”.

Describing the first time she bathed her husband during his three-week hospital stay for intense cancer treatment, she doesn't begin with “When my husband was in hospital” or?”I remember the first bath I gave my husband”. Instead, she opens with this paragraph:

“His shoulders hang low and his back is bowed. His body is forty pounds lighter than it was a few days ago, before the cancer surgery, before the blood loss that caused his mind to empty its memories. His is a body without strength, without vigor, without lust, without intention, without history. A body taken apart and reassembled….”

Why is this so much more powerful and compelling than “When my husband was in hospital”? Because in just three sentences, the author has given us all the facts we need with vivid imagery and impactful language. “Before the cancer surgery” is all we need to know the context. But it's nested within a narrative of “a body taken apart and reassembled”, “before the blood loss that caused his mind to empty its memories”.

2. Use repetition for emphasis

Note also in the above passage the effective use of repetition: “without strength, without vigor, without lust, without intention, without history”.

Repetition, when done deliberately for effect rather than inadvertently due to poor vocabulary, can make for powerful writing. In other cases, it generates humour. Simple though it is, it can convey the seriousness or absurdity of a fact or feeling. In this instance, it accentuates the sense of loss - “without” - drilling into the mind of the reader the absence of personhood, the disappearance of those qualities that made the man who he was.

3. Use specific imagery or concrete experiences

In trying to convey her emotions, it would have been easy to write something like, “It was sad to see my husband's body so lifeless”. But all this would have done is tell us the fact that she felt sad. Instead, she uses very specific imagery that allows us to put ourselves in the author's shoes and experience her pain for ourselves:

“I lift his arm onto my shoulder and I rub under as the silky soap makes a trail into the pit, dark curls slick with lather. Once I could lick there, swirling his hair in my tongue, breathing in his scent as if to memorize the salty musk. Now there is no odor, except of chemotherapy, the smell of ice on steel.”

This enables us to discover the significance of the moment. We can't help but feel the writer's sorrow. If she merely wrote, “I felt sad”, she may have evoked our sympathy, but with the detailed imagery above, she has gained our empathy.

4. Don't conclude; ruminate

It's commonplace to end non-fiction with a conclusion or summary. But flash writing should end in a way that keeps the reader mulling over the content, causes them to reflect, or even read it again. To do that, flash non-fiction doesn't end with the facts of a story or an argument but with why they matter to the writer.

Let's look at how Sonya Lea expertly weaves her reflections into the facts of her story:

“I soak the cloth in water again, and rinse him, warm droplets sliding down his forearms where I hope to wake something that wants to live…”

With just one clause - “where I hope to wake something that wants to live” - she seamlessly carries us from the routine action of bathing to emotional significance.

Less is more

So there you have it. Four flash techniques you can use in your writing, even if flash content isn't what you're aiming for.

The allure of flash writing is its brevity, openness to other genres, and the ability to convey so much with choice vocabulary and clever structure.

If you write non-fiction, whether you're a content marketer, journalist, or working on your autobiography, try incorporating these techniques. They'll take your writing to another level. And you may surprise yourself with how much you can say in so few words.