I think your piece is well written. You understand the concept of flash fiction and have done well incorporating most of the desired elements. Your dialogue was very concise and to the point, which is absolutely necessary in flash fiction. I have a few suggestions that may make your piece more compelling to the reader. My biggest suggestion is to add more conflict. The story is very straightforward, and the climax has a minimal buildup. When people read flash fiction, they are looking to entirely swept away in just a few hundred words. That being the case, your job is to add as much conflict as possible. Conflict doesn't necessarily mean that one character hates another or a fight breaks out. Conflict can be something as simply as a flat tire, or spilled coffee, or a hang nail. Anything that offers opposition to the protagonist's quest. I think if you introduce additional conflict in the very first line, your story will suck the readers in from the get-go. Keep writing! Never stop refining your talent.
The emotion being conveying is very clear, a refreshing trait. I enjoyed the imagery. It is very vivid and dark, mysterious almost, even though the piece is very straight forward. I admire that. I have one major suggestion that could improve your writing drastically. Adverbs should never be used and adjectives should always be used sparingly. There are several reasons for this. Adverbs are known to be a crutch to many writers. Most professionals avoid them completely, because they know if they use the proper verb, the adverb becomes obsolete. They also distract the reader from developing their own images of your characters. The same goes with the adjectives. In moderation, they can be the one element that sets your writing over the top of other authors, or they can be the downfall of the entire piece. Your writing is strong enough on its own! You don't need to rely on these crutches to make your pieces emotional, or powerful. You can do it simply by choosing the right words. I hope this helps somewhat. In my fist year of college, my creative writing teacher gave me the same speech and it completely redefined the way that I write. I am very thankful she approached me. Keep writing!
Great imagery. I enjoyed that your writing was so concise, especially the dialogue which is very hard to do for even some of the best writers. My favorite line is, "Finally I started singing the pokemon theme song." That sentence alone told me more about the character than the rest of the description combined. Those are the kind of lines that every author hopes to generate at least every-so-often. I do have a few suggestions that could make your writing even more concise for the reader. These are a few tips that my professors have given me over the years, and I find them very helpful.
1) Avoid cliches at all cost. I know it can be difficult at times because they are used to often in everyday speech, but that is the exact reason that they are dangerous to authors. Because they are used so often, the reader immediately tunes them out or applies their own interpretation to those words. Either way, it puts a distance between your story and the reader. Phrases like "Fingers crossed", or "Like a madman", or "Out of it", can be revised.
2) "For once I didn’t envy him being able to drive while I still had two more years to go." This sentence is a bit awkward.
3) "Tell them we're going to be late to pick up Anna." The "to pick up Anna" portion can be taken out because the audience already knows why the protagonists are heading to the day care.
4) The number 20 should be written out even if it appears in a quotation.
5) "Tell them yourself," should be put in italics rather than quotations because she didn't actually say it.
Other than that, I found the piece very enjoyable. Keep writing!
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