Perhaps the future is already here because it's the way people today like to read. More newspaper readers read the personal ads and the comics than read the editorials.
Is it shortened attention spans? It might be a Pavlovian "conditioned response" after four generations of TV idiots. It could be the effect of today's mad dash to nowhere. Whatever, the crafts are here to stay.
In four to eight thousand word short stories the writer has time to describe the living room curtains and what the protagonist's Aunt Maud from Wexford had for breakfast, but not in Micro or Flash fiction. The writer can imply we're in the house and that someone's in the kitchen. What the living room or Aunt Maud looks like is up to the involvement of the reader's imagination.
In my opinion, that's the key to the Micro & Flash crafts; "involvement". With the writer's skill at inference and implication the reader is invited to participate in the story -- to become an onlooker inside the story who asks the characters questions.
These are not television stories where you're spoonfed plot, settings, characters and dialog. Please participate and enter ...
2007 Ramon Collins