Week 4: Story Lab

(Books are magic!, Jane Goodwin)

 Before taking this class, I have had some very brief experience with microfiction, or flash fiction, but nowhere near enough to consider myself an expert.  I wrote a piece for my high school's Christmas Flash Fiction contest, and was fortunate enough to be selected as one of the winners.  The parameters of the contest was that the story had to be a maximum of three sentences long.  But in the years since then, I've discovered how little I really know about microfiction, and how much there is to explore.  In one of my creative writing classes in college, I wrote a flash fiction piece that was about a page.  At the time, I believe I thought that was a pretty standard length for microfiction.  

Looking at these examples of microfiction, I'm surprised by how many different variations there are of microfiction!  I'm most fascinated by the shorter works, like Hint Fiction (25 words) and Six-Word Stories.  I tend to be a wordy writer, explaining myself very thoroughly and waxing lyrical voice a lot.  It would really put me out of my comfort zone to write a story in that condensed of a space.  Because these stories are more like a snapshot of life instead of a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end.  I don't have much experience writing open-to-interpretation snapshots, but it seems like a beautiful way to capture life, at least from the examples that I read.  I would definitely be interested in trying out one of these extremely short microfiction styles sometime!

Assignment link: Learning about Microfiction