Flash Fiction Examples Under 500 Words: Three Originals and What They Share
Quick answer: Three original flash fiction stories under 500 words at three different lengths, with notes on how each uses its count and where flash fiction begins and ends.
Flash fiction under 500 words means a complete story, with a turn and an ending, in less space than most magazine articles spend clearing their throat. The three original pieces below run to roughly 120, 170 and 190 words, so you can see the form at three sizes. Each has a named character, a single place, and an ending that is an action. After them, notes on what all three share and on where the flash label starts and stops.
Weight
The scales at the boxing club were older than anyone in the building, and Aisha Bello stood on them in her socks with the coach's hand on her shoulder. Fifty-seven point two. Two hundred grams over. 'Skip for twenty minutes,' Coach said. She skipped. At the end she stepped back on. Fifty-seven point one. The coach looked at the dial and then at her face and then he took his hand off her shoulder, put his own foot on the edge of the platform, just the toe, and the needle sank. 'Fifty-six nine,' he said. 'Go and eat something.' She never told anyone, and neither did he, and she lost the fight anyway, on points, and did not mind.
Rehearsal
Oskar had been best man three times and had never given a speech he did not regret, so this time he practised on the dog. The dog, a patient greyhound called Mabel, lay on the kitchen floor while he did the bit about how he and Piotr had met, and the bit about the camping trip, and the bit he was not sure about, the bit about Piotr's mother, who had died in March and who had once told Oskar, at a barbecue, that she was glad her son had a friend who would say things out loud. Mabel raised her head at that part. Oskar stopped. He read it again, quieter. She kept her head up. On the day, he did the camping trip and the meeting and then he looked at the bride's table and said the thing about the mother, and Piotr put his hand flat on the tablecloth and left it there, and Oskar understood that he had been practising the wrong bits for years.
Directory
After her husband's funeral, Beatriz found that she could not throw away his phone, so she charged it and read his contacts instead. Four hundred and twelve names. She knew perhaps ninety. The rest were his: plumbers, a man called Big Tony, three different people saved as Dentist, a woman named only as R. She sat on the bed with the phone and scrolled, and it was like walking through a house he had lived in without her, room after room. R. bothered her for a week. On the eighth day she rang the number. A woman answered, elderly, Portuguese, and Beatriz said who she was and why she was calling, and the woman was quiet for a moment and then said, 'Rosário. I cleaned his office. He sent me a card every Christmas for twenty-two years. I did not know how to come to the funeral. I am sorry.' Beatriz sat with that. Then she asked for Rosário's address and wrote it on the back of an envelope, and in December she sent the card herself, and signed it with both their names, and did not explain.
What the three share
Every one opens on a concrete object, scales, a dog, a phone, and gives the character a task involving it. The task is the plot. The turn in each case is a small act by a second person: a toe on a platform, a raised head, a name given. And every ending is a decision expressed physically or in silence, never in a stated realisation.
Flash fiction is generally anything under 1,000 words, though some editors set the ceiling at 1,500 or 750. Under 500 is the band most contests use. All three stories here would fit that band with room to spare, and Weight would also qualify as microfiction under most definitions. If you want a reader's verdict on one of yours, Writory's short story contest scores every entry against a published rubric and sends a certificate with the number.
What writers can take from this
- Open on the object the plot will use.
- Let a second character make one gesture that turns the story.
- Keep backstory to one clause per story.
- End on a decision the reader sees rather than hears.
- Write to 600 and cut to 450; the last 150 words you remove are always explanation.
Try it yourself
Write three versions of the same story at 100, 250 and 450 words. Keep the object, the character and the final action identical. Notice which version you would send out and why.
Questions
What is the maximum word count for flash fiction?
There is no single rule. Most editors say 1,000 words; some allow 1,500; a few competitions cap it at 500 or 750. If you are submitting, use the venue's number and ignore everyone else's.
Is flash fiction the same as a short short story?
Short short story is the older name for the same thing, common from the 1920s to the 1980s. Flash fiction took over in the 1990s after an anthology of that title. Sudden fiction and microfiction are cousins with slightly different ranges.
Can flash fiction have more than one scene?
Under 500 words, one scene is usual and two is possible if the transition is a single sentence. Rehearsal has two scenes, the kitchen and the wedding, joined by three words: On the day.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
Enter a Writory story contest
Enter the Writory Short Story Contest and have your own story read and scored out of 100. Entries close 25 November. That first entry makes you a Writorian.