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“Hello, Mr. Hogan.  Explain how the best flash fiction is theater.”

“Well, Hallelujah, have you ever been to a play?”

“A few times.”

“And?”

“I enjoyed the fact that even though the actors were portraying characters the actors themselves were real people.  I was in a few plays in high school and if something went wrong you had to ad lib.  The show must go on. If you ad lib well enough, the audience never catches on that something is wrong.  I guess I liked the danger of something possibly going wrong.”

“This is why the best flash fiction is theater.  There is always that tension that something will go wrong.  Of course it doesn’t.  The story will turn out the way the writer wrote it; but when characters act with each other it does give the sense that each character has his or her own will.”

“I see what you mean.  When a writer writes a flash fiction story with drama in it the story has the feel of a true story about real people.”

“Exactly.  Writing is drama.  And why would a writer write a story unless it was drama, unless it was theater?”

“I noticed all your stories are written like little dramas.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”