What are some tips for writing microstories or flash fiction? Ive read some really bad ones...

What are some tips for writing microstories or flash fiction? Ive read some really bad ones, seems to be a hard genre to master.

Condensed ambiguity.

Two shoes, pink for the girl
Empty, and unfulfilled waiting for the first step.
The left, and the right ready to take flight.

Tick tock, tick tock, and then,
With a rapid set of events
Step
Step
Crick
The girl thundered down the stairs.
And Thumped to the front

Now, warm and filled, they feel the thrill, and take leap to the air
And down
They come

Splash, free at last

what exactly is condensed ambiguity?

You got it down pat. Good job.

Rubbish. Microstories are specific as fuck, theyre laser focused.

Condensed milk. Like, it is. Understand? He responded, and we never spoke again.

1 of these 2 shoes is left
& neither of them is free;
4 sale: memento of a stillbirth.

If only 1 is left what is right?

if one is left
the otter is right

Okay..
But if there is only a right, what is left??

a right alone should not be left alone but taken to the corresponding lonely left. a right not alone but with a left together should be both left together, not letting the left go right away nor the right eventually either.

No, Wrong.
I'm sorry.

If there is only a right, then nothing is left...

nothing is left to say about either shoe since where there is no right there can be ipso facto no right-and-left and hence no left either only a shoe whose rightness or otherwise will never be ascertained.

Yes.

But what is to the left, of the one shoe?
There is also no left, to the right

quite right:
nothing left
never worn.

This is our right,
To what is left,
All deformed

all the forms
I'm
left listing
to verify the
right wristing
of the dextrose
avoiding
sinister
plots.

The inner mourn
Time
Ticking, existing
To rectify the
Right hand twisting
Down and across
Pointing
Blistering
Thoughts

widdershins leftwise! cries the cobbler
leather-needle stuck in leather heart
hurriedly consumes the clockwork apple
and delicately demonstrates his art:
baby shoes.

Lederhosen weasel! Lies and sobber
Teathered knees dull, tucked to their soul
Repeatedly dusts and brooms his castle
And feveriously feathers out the tart:
Old man blues

stoats on the easel inked
with tardy feather pen
cheesecake on the castle stairs
laid by a fevered hen:
eat your greens.

Moats on the eastern basin
With bards weathered inn
Cheap plates, our muse grows thin
Paid by tempted fate
Glean, as steak

motes, shards, rival gardens
the hardly bothered win
freight capsules, honest work
a bartered dolphin fin:
glam asphalt.

Lydia Davis is the master at this.
Kafka also has some very short stories.

Bump