Postcard Fiction Examples: Three Originals and What Makes the Form Work
Quick answer: What postcard fiction is, three original examples of around 120 to 135 words each, and notes on how place, address and brevity shape stories that fit on a card.
Postcard fiction is a story short enough to fit on the back of a postcard, usually 100 to 250 words, and often written with a place in view, the way a postcard is. Some competitions require the story to be printed on an actual card; others use the term loosely for flash under 250. The best examples borrow the postcard's habits: a specific location, a sense of being addressed to someone, and no room to explain. The three originals below run between 120 and 135 words. After them, notes on what the form asks and how it differs from a drabble.
Wish You Were
Dear Hal. The room you booked has the sea on one side and a car park on the other and I have been sitting on the car park side, because the sea was your idea. The woman at breakfast asked if I was expecting someone and I said my husband was delayed, which is one word for it. I walked to the pier you talked about. It is shorter than you said. There is a man who paints your name on a grain of rice for four pounds and I thought about it for longer than I should have and then bought an ice cream instead, which you would have called a decision. It was. Coming home Thursday. Do not be there. Ivy.
Terminal 2
Farouk has been at Gate 41 for six hours because the fog in Manchester has not lifted and the fog in Manchester does not care that his daughter is being born in Cairo. He has bought two coffees, a neck pillow and a phone charger he did not need. At hour five his wife's sister sends a photograph, and he looks at it for a long time, at the small red face, at his wife's hand at the edge of the frame, and then he goes to the gate desk and asks the woman there, who has been shouted at all day, if she would like to see a picture of his daughter. She would. She looks for longer than she needs to. 'Go and sit down,' she says. 'I'll call you first.'
Lido
The pool in the park closed at the end of September and Marguerite swam on the last morning as she had on every morning since April, forty lengths, breaststroke, in the lane by the wall. The lifeguard, a boy who would be back at university by Monday, sat with his hood up. When she got out he handed her the towel she had left on the bench and said, 'Same time next year?' She was seventy-eight and had not planned that far, and said so, and he said, 'I'll be here,' with the confidence of the very young. She found she believed him. She walked home through the wet leaves with her hair dripping and her season ticket still in her bag, and did not throw it away.
What the postcard asks
Place first. Each story is anchored to somewhere a postcard might come from: a seaside hotel, an airport gate, a park lido. The place gives the story its object and its clock, a car park view, a fog delay, a closing date. Wish You Were takes the form literally and is written as a postcard, which lets the address 'Do not be there' land as an ending. The other two borrow the postcard's brevity without the format.
The difference from a drabble is that postcard fiction is not counted to the word. It is bounded by space and by the habit of being about somewhere. That gives you a little more room and a little less rigour, and it suits stories where the location is doing work. All three clear the 100-word floor of Writory's short story contest without any growing, and each would come back with a score out of 100 and a certificate.
What writers can take from this
- Start with somewhere a postcard could come from and keep the story there.
- Give the place a clock: a closing date, a delay, a checkout time.
- If you write it as an actual postcard, use the sign-off as the ending.
- Keep the addressee offstage and let their absence shape the tone.
- Aim for 120 to 200 words; that is what a card physically holds.
Try it yourself
Write a postcard fiction of under 200 words, addressed to a named person who is not present, from a place you have actually stood in. The final line must be an instruction.
Questions
How many words fit on a postcard?
Around 100 to 150 in normal handwriting, up to 250 if you write small. Competitions that use the term typically set a limit of 250 words, and some ask for the story on a real card.
Is postcard fiction the same as flash fiction?
It is a sub-form of flash defined by space and often by place rather than by a strict count. All postcard fiction is flash; most flash is not written with a postcard's habits in mind.
Are there postcard fiction competitions?
Yes. Several small presses and literary festivals run annual postcard story prizes, and some require the entry to arrive by post on a picture postcard. Check whether the picture side must relate to the story.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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