Typescript will post a new challenge each Wednesday to encourage creativity and inspire conversation. Feel free to talk about the challenge or share your writing results in the comments section below by leaving an excerpt and/or a link to your own site or blog.

Also known as the short short story, flash fiction is loosely defined as very short fiction containing all the elements of the short story, but with a word count of 1000 words or less. A complete story of characters and plot, this type of writing can be a challenge for the writer used to writing at length. Flash fiction is a great exercise to test your skills as well as open new worlds, meet new characters, and tell the stories waiting to get out onto the page.

In honor of this month’s giveaway, Tania Hershman, author of The White Road and Other Stories and whose book contains a mix of 27 flash fiction and short stories, offers one of her own flash fiction stories as an example:

Samantha watches him stroll, the folds of his trousers sliding smoothly against one another. She has never before seen a man absorb without arrogance the admiration of every woman. But then she has never before sat at a pavement table in a Venetian café in early summer. She is twenty two. This is her first time in Italy, her first real espresso, her first self-possessed Italian man. Samantha sighs, the weight of all the firsts pressing upon her. Without it, she might fly.

Years later, when she tells her lover about that trip, she will laugh, raise her eyebrows, shake her head as if to dislodge the memories of that innocent time. Her lover will for an instant see her as she was – smooth skin, guileless eyes – and he will for a moment wonder how he would have loved her then.

Challenge: Write a coming-of-age story in 200 words or less.