Three Reasons Why You Should Consider Writing Microfiction

Photo by Neel on Unsplash

If nothing else came of my time writing on Medium, I met wonderful friends there. One of those friends, Christy Kimmerly, introduced me to microfiction and Justin Deming’s publication, The Friday Fix, dedicated to fifty-word stories. I immediately fell in love with the form. It has provided me with a wonderful new writing playground.

It’s hard to believe that I’ve only been writing these tiny stories for a little over a year and a half. I knew nothing about them, prior to discovering them on Medium.

Microfiction is considered a subset of flash fiction, coming in at under three hundred words. I like to keep it under one hundred words, and especially like the constraints inherent in writing a fifty-word story. I love the brevity of it and the challenge. I love that it requires me to hone skills that serve my longer-form writing well. So here are my thoughts on the reasons I believe fiction writers should write micro.

1.    Micro forces you to whittle down your story to its barest essentials to make it fit the word limit

This means knowing exactly what you’re trying to say. No floundering about, trying to find your focus. With only fifty words in which to tell your story, you have no room to muck about. One of my husband’s pet peeves is singers who can’t find the note. They slide up to it, butchering it on the way. No chance of sliding in a micro. You have to be note perfect every time.

2. Micro makes you consider every word

Is it necessary? Does it contribute to the story you’re trying to tell? Can it be cut? Will a different word be more powerful? Writers are wordsmiths. Micro hones those skills. It also makes you look harder at your word choices in your longer stories.

3. You must tell a complete story — beginning, middle, end, within the constraints of the word count

This is a little like number one but goes further. Micro is not poetry, though Medium often suggested the poetry tag when I published there. It’s a story and has to have the features of a story. I love to add a twist at the end, as in my micro, Dandelion Fluff, which I published here recently. Setting up for a twist in such a short story is challenging, and I think I mentioned…I like challenges.

Microfiction is, in my opinion, one of the best training grounds for a writer. It’s quick, easy, and fun, and yet hones skills every writer needs to learn. If you can write a great story in fifty words, you will have mastered many of the major elements of good storytelling.

If you haven’t already tried your hand at micro, I encourage you to do so. Friday Fix Fiction publishes original, themed fifty-word stories once a month and is currently open to submissions. I would also consider publishing some reader stories here on Fiction in 50 if any of you are interested.

Here’s a quick Micro to finish off.

Void

Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay

Shattered beings emerge from the void, each more horrific than the last. Tortured, they writhe, darkness pouring from rents in skin covering only bone.

Ravenous, they devour all in their path, desperate to fill their emptiness. Never satiated, endless hunger drives them forward. Destroyers of worlds, they come for you.

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