- Extremely Concise: Ranging from 6-word stories to around 1,000 words.
- Focus on a "Snapshot": Unlike a full-length memoir, it explores one specific moment, turning point, or memory rather than an entire life story.
- True and Personal: It is a, first-person, non-fiction narrative based on real life, often focusing on a "flashpoint" or a scene that implies a larger story.
- High Impact: Designed to deliver a punch in a short space, using precise, vivid, and often poetic language.
- Thematic Depth: Beneath the surface story, it aims to make sense of the experience and uncover deeper meaning.
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Writing magazine Dec 2025.
Real Life Great Stories. Short and Sweet. Jenny Alexander.
Writing flash memoir and prose poetry.
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This write up focuses only on flash memoir writing.
A flash memoir is a short story from your own life, 500 words or fewer.
No room for complicated plotting and exposition but story must deliver CHANGE POINT.
The reader has a glimpse of how things have been and how they are changed because of what happens in the story.
TRY THIS
Think of an incident in your life that made you change your mind in some way or take some kind of action. No need be a big thing - maybe you experienced a moment of joy in nature when the world was feeling bleak, or somebody said something kind or mean or you tried something new.
Write on sentence for each of the following:
1. What happened? The story.
2. How did it feel? The physical settings, using your senses.
3. How did it feel emotionally? How did those emotions feel in your body?
4. What did you learn? What changed for you because this happened?
Write the story in 500 words, then in 100 words and finally in 50.
Then take one of your flash pieces and create a narrative prose poem from it, redrafting it to tell the story using poetic devices and language.
Finally, visualise the little story as a film, pause it at a key point and picture the still. Focus in on ONE object or character, describe that and allow your thought to develop as it will.
Or take several objects and describe the scene using those.
Write a reflection - how did it feel to distil a scene from your full-length memoir right down to 500 words or fewer in flash memoir and then to a fragment in a prose poem?
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Think of an incident in your life that made you change your mind in some
way or take some kind of action. No need be a big thing - maybe you experienced a moment of joy in nature when the world was feeling bleak, or somebody said something kind or mean or you tried something new.
Write on sentence for each of the following:
1. What happened? The story.
2. How did it feel? The physical settings, using your senses.
3. How did it feel emotionally? How did those emotions feel in your body?
4. What did you learn? What changed for you because this happened?
The 77-year-old mother. Widow. 2 busy working adult children.
Loved cloudscapes. Sunrises. sunsets.
One day, central vision looks blurry or black.
Adult daughter concerned. Immediately see private specialist. Mount Elizabeth.
Wet macular eye degeneration. Private hospital. NO waiting unlike SGH.
Daughter seeks private specialist.
Treated. Repeat injections. Lunch.
Ship cruise with mother. Sunrise. clouds.
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1. An 80-year-old frail-looking widow and mother stays home alone. She is a Chinese woman, thin and medium height living in Singapore. Two adult Chinese children in their 40s are busy working. She photographs cloudscapes especially sunrises, by herself now. Her husband who also loved photography had passed away.
2. One morning, she saw dark spots and blurry areas in the centre of the cloudscapes and sunrises. Her 40-year-old daughter Abigail quickly checked her into a private hospital to consult Dr Chan, a private eye specialist. "Why not consult the government hospital eye specialist?" I asked her. "No, no," she told me, eyes seriously. "She will not be seen or treated immediately. She will be blind due to the delay."
3. In the private hospital, she was treated and recovered her vision. Her daughter visited her.
Scene 3 — After Surgery
Location: Hospital recovery area
Visuals
-
Chinese 80-year-old Mother slowly opens her eyes after surgery.
-
Chinese 40-year-old Daughter sits beside her holding her hand.
Mother smiles.
Mother:
“I can see you clearly now. No more blurry central vision in my right eye when I see the sunrise.”
4. An adult 40-year-old daughter and her 80-year-old frail looking mother are on the deck on the side of the cruise ship appreciating the beauty of the sun set over the green sea.
Scene 4 — After Surgery
Location: Hospital recovery area
Visuals
-
80-year-old Chinese Mother slowly opens her eyes after surgery.
-
40-year-old Daughter sits beside her holding her hand. She said: "Mum, are you
seeing a central patch of blurry vision in your right eye now?"
Mother smiles.
Mother:
“I can see you clearly now. No more blurry eye sight when I watch the sun rise. Thank you for taking me to consult the private eye specialist promptly. His early treatment saves my vision.”
WET MACULAR DEGENERATION
blurred, distorted, or lost central vision
Scene 5 — Emotional Ending
Location: Deck of the large cruise ship sailing
in the green ocean, sunrise with pink and orange tones and cumulus white clouds
Possible location:
Straits of Malacca
Visuals
-
Mother walking slowly with daughter on the ship's deck
-
Sky with pink and orange tones, white clouds and sunrise.
-
Mother looking around in wonder.
Mother:
“The world looks beautiful again. I can see clearly with my right eye now”
Daughter (smiling):
“You can enjoy taking photographs of sunrise now.”
Final shot
-
Daughter supporting mother as they walk away together on
the ship's deck looking at the pink and orange sunrise and green waves
of the calm green sea. A breeze blew their hair backwards.
Cumulus clouds
The sea breeze - salty taste
ship motion ?
NO blurring of central vision
Sunrise
Scene 5 — Emotional Ending
Location: Park or waterfront in Singapore
Possible location:
Gardens by the Bay
Visuals
-
Mother walking slowly with daughter in the garden.
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Bright flowers and sunlight.
-
Mother looking around in wonder.
Mother:
“The world looks beautiful again.”
Daughter (smiling):
“You deserve to see it.”
Final shot
-
Daughter supporting mother as they walk away together.
REFERENCE:
pika - 2 videos
Pika 2.2 AI video generation platform
chatsgpt - diagram Wet macular eye degeneration
