With roots in folklore and collections like Grimms' Fairy Tales and Aesop's Fables, (very) short stories have been around for centuries. They fell out of fashion for a while, but recently came back in a big way — not entirely surprising for a generation that publish 140-character 'stories' every day. Depending on who you ask, there are up to six different categories:
Flash fiction: Max 1500 words.
Sudden fiction: Max 750 words.
Drabble, or microfiction: Max 100 words.
Dribble, or minisaga: Max 50 words.
Twitterature: Max 280 characters.
Six-word story: Any story with a single-digit word count is a category unto itself.
Flash Fiction from blog.reedsy.com
by Chuck Stromme
Feb 9, 2020
Also from blog.reedsy.com:
With roots in folklore and collections like Grimms' Fairy Tales and Aesop's Fables, (very) short stories have been around for centuries. They fell out of fashion for a while, but recently came back in a big way — not entirely surprising for a generation that publish 140-character 'stories' every day. Depending on who you ask, there are up to six different categories: