Have you heard of flash fiction?

I looked it up on Google and their AI said it was a very short story, but it was supposed to have characters and plot, like any other fiction.

Okay, let's write a flash fiction.

First, let's make up a character. They say the principle character is called the protagonist, so we'll call our character Joe Protag.

There once was a character. His name was Joe Protag. Actually, his name is not important. But his nature is. He was mean.

No wait, they said your protagonist was supposed to be "likable" so the readers can identify with him.

Let's start again.

There once was a character. His name is not important, but his nature is. He was not mean. He was actually quite likable. I'll tell you why. It's because he grew up in nice family that treated him well.

Except for the beatings. That wasn't very nice of them, but it was necessary. To make him not mean.

So, when he was a little boy, he learned not be mean when he was in the house. But when he went out to play, he wasn't so not mean. In fact, he was very mean.

Hmm. Maybe that would make our protagonist not likable.

No, it wasn't his fault. That's what the prison psychologist said. He said children who are beaten often grow up to be mean.

A prison psychologist? How did he end up in prison? I'd better create that.

When he was little, he was mean to the other kids. When he got to be a teenager, he went downtown and met some guys who were doing the old "found ring" scam.

The tourists were eager to buy the ring from him. After all, it did look like a real diamond ring, and why wouldn't you trust a sweet-faced kid?

That couldn't exactly be called mean. After all, the marks saw something they wanted and were willing to pay for it.

Eventually, he went out on his own and got into picking pockets. He tried a number of techniques, but eventually became expert at the "pigeon poop" routine. He'd tell the mark that a pigeon had just popped on their back, and he'd quickly start wiping it off using a nice clean handkerchief and the bottle of water he just happen to have.

So they lost their wallets. Even that couldn't really be called mean because he was helping them stay clean, wasn't he?

Unfortunately, there was something about our protagonist that made him never satisfied. He decided to try some bigger stealing.

He got away with a few breaking and enterings, but one night he climbed up on the roof of a pawn shop and worked his way down into the shop through a heating vent. Unfortunately, the owner was waiting with a shotgun.

Our protagonist was lucky not to be dead. Oh well, his prison sentence was not all that many years, not really.

He tried a few scams in prison, but they were ready for cons like him. He got beat up. Bad.

So now you might say he's retired. But he has a calendar in his cell, and he uses it to mark off the days until his sentence is up. He's already planning a really good scam, and this time, he won't get caught.

So, how's that for a flash fiction. It has a plot (sort of), and an interesting character, a character who's not really mean. Or do you disagree?