Image via: Taylor Made Designs

You could probably use an extra lifetime just to read all those wonderful and interesting words out there:

• the contents of your bookshelf
• the contents of your bookstore
• all those blogs you think are cool but never have time to read
• that stack of New Yorkers piling up
• those literary mags you subscribed to at the last writers conference in a flurry of writerly camaraderie
• the nutritional content of all the food in your cupboard
• the fine print at the bottom of that credit card application that seems too good-to-be-true

For the time-pressed writer and bibliophile, there's always short form.

Brief stories and tiny poems are nothing new. With forms as old as haiku and the fable, the concept of the quick, to-the-point piece of writing is very, very old. However, in the last couple decades or so, a new interest in these very short forms has resurfaced in the literary world. Of course, we can blame the internet and our increasingly busy and fragmented lives for the rising popularity of things like flash fiction. A short tour through a few of my favorite writing sites turned up quite a few examples that run the gamut from 6-word stories to 750-word memoirs, everything in-between and a few beyond.

Here are a just a few of the varieties I came up with, as well as where they are published and how you can get involved. Also, read to the end to learn how you can enter LitReactor’s own Short Shorts Contest and publish a petite story of your own right here.

Flash Fiction

This self-explanatory genre comes in a variety of sizes:  the 6-word story, the 55 fiction, the 100-word Drabble, and the 1000-word Micro to name a few.

Despite its shortened length, the rules of flash fiction are the same as the rules of any fictional story. Each story, no matter how short, must contain the basic elements of plot:

• protagonist
• conflict
• obstacles
• resolution

However, not all of these elements must actually be written. They can exist in the unsaid, which is the challenge of such a form. Clever word choice, punctuation, allusion, point of view, and other elements can contribute to the satisfaction of these basic requirements.

To see how this can work even with the most restricted variations of the short form, consider this example attributed to the master of brevity himself, Ernest Hemingway:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Of course, it’s what isn’t said that’s of interest in this story. The story itself seems to be the result of a much more dramatic tale that has taken place “off screen” or in scenes to which we can never be privy. It could be the last line of a much longer piece, though, now having read the line, most of anything that might have come before is not necessary. It is the ultimate in plot economy. Let’s break down this tiny piece to ensure it includes the required elements:

• PROTAGONIST: Though not mentioned by name nor introduced through dialogue or narrative point-of-view cues like “I” or “he/she”, the reader can assume the protagonist is the author of this advertisement. You might even be able to infer that the writer is the parent of this baby, who may or may not have existed, depending on your interpretation of the shoes having “never [been] worn”.
• CONFLICT: Clearly the baby (or lack of) is the conflict here. As readers, we can only guess when it comes to the fate of this baby. Did the baby die? Was the baby ever born? Was the baby even conceived? We don’t know the details, but we can feel that the baby (and its ultimate absence) is the most poignant part of the story.
• OBSTACLES: The obstacles are almost entirely in the background and can only be inferred by the reader. The specifics are not important, so Hemmingway doesn’t include them, but he allows for the reader to imagine all the possible scenarios that led to the protagonist posting this ad.
• RESOLUTION: The resolution, as I mentioned above, is this line itself. These six words are the final moment of a longer story that is not written. There is no baby to wear the shoes, so they must be sold.

Hemingway's story covers all the necessary elements, and as a result, is pretty strong story and leaves enough to the reader's imagination to create a lasting impression.

What follows are a few more specific examples of Flash Fiction from magazines and other publishing establishments that you might find interesting & inspiring.

Six-Word Story

The website Six Word Story Everyday includes visual representations for each story they post, though I’d argue that most of them do not adhere to the four basic plot elements, and some read like bumper stickers. But there are a few gems nonetheless. My favorite is:

Her friends forgot their drunken promises.

-Dylan Sneed (writer) & Jeff Rogers (Designer)

In 2006, Wired magazine asked sci-fi, horror and fantasy writers, as well as screenwriters, to pen six-word stories. Here is a long list of what they received. Here are a few that I liked.

Gown removed carelessly. Head, less so.
 

- Joss Whedon

I’m dead. I’ve missed you. Kiss … ?
 

-Neil Gaiman

Longed for him. Got him. Shit.

- Margaret Atwood

55 Fiction

If you just can’t be that concise, there are a few longer versions out there. In 1987, Steve Moss, editor of the New Times in San Luis Obisbo, announced the first annual 55 Fiction contest. In addition to the mandate that all submissions be exactly 55 words (no more, no less), the contest required that stories include setting, character(s), conflict, and resolution. Stories were allowed to have titles which were excluded from the overall word count, but that had to be seven words or less. In fact, Mr. Moss took the endeavor quite seriously and asked contestants to consider all the elements of fiction and to bring each story to a satisfying resolution. Here are the complete rules with more explanation from Mr. Moss.

You can read the most recent issue at HERE. Here are two I found interesting.

Declaration

She whispered it. It was more vocalized breath than actualized utterance. And she meant it. Clearly.

He may have heard it, but never let on.

Not that he had time to.

“I only think of murder with you around.”

-Dylan Rede of Ascadero, CA

These Questions Seem Kind of Specialized

We told the kittens they couldn’t come to pub trivia. Then Question 1 was “How many times do they feed you at the pound?” We wrongly said twice daily. Question 2: “Is the squirrel in the back yard that barks at Snowflake an asshole?” We answered “no.” Then Question 3: “Is string cool?” Wrong Again.

-Joel Page of Dallas, TX

The Napkin Fiction Project

In 2007, Esquire sent 250 cocktail napkins to writers all other the country and asked them to submit a story that fit on the napkin. With the exception that it be written entirely on the napkin, there were no word length limitations. Some writers wrote just a few lines, and some filled both sides or added illustrations. The Napkin Fiction Project included writers like Aimee Bender, ZZ Packer, and Rick Moody. Here are two examples.

The Professional Sasquatch

by Tao Lin

The professional sasquatch worked in midtown for the corporation that in 2006 bought American Apparel. His job was to calculate if American Apparel would make more money if they ignored shoplifters; told shoplifters to never come back in the store again; brought shoplifters into a room and took a Polaroid photo of them and banned them from the store; or took shoplifters into a room, handcuffed them, called the police, and pressed charges against them. The professional sasquatch hated his life. One day he was watching TV at Chickpea on St. Marks and someone on the Discovery Channel said he didn’t exist. One day he was on the 6 train and someone said, “Is that sasquatch?” and someone else said, “You’re stupid, sasquatch lives in Tibet, and sometimes in Montana, and doesn’t exist anyway.” After work each day the professional sasquatch ran to a forest in New Jersey then walked to a river and washed his button-down shirt and striped tie and black dress pants. He made loud noises of despair and often cried, and his tears fell on his clothes as he washed them. One day the professional sasquatch was walking out of Kmart when two men opened his bag and saw soap and said the soap, which the professional sasquatch had just bought from Duane Reade, was stolen. The two men brought the professional sasquatch into a room and told him to get into a cage that was there. “I didn’t steal the soap,” said the professional sasquatch. The two men put the professional sasquatch in a headlock and punched and kicked him and took $120 from his wallet. The police came and the professional sasquatch was handcuffed and brought to a police station and put in a cell with a toy poodle. The toy poodle stared at the professional sasquatch and made him nervous. After a while the toy poodle was taken out of the cell to get her fingerprints taken. “I am going to ass rape you so hard,” the toy poodle screamed at a cop. “I get punched in the face at Starbucks and I get thrown in jail?” the toy poodle screamed. “I thought you were in a bar fight,” said a cop. “I was taking a shit in Starbucks and when I came out someone hit me,” the toy poodle screamed. The professional sasquatch signed a paper saying he would appear in court on November 15th and was released. In New Jersey a few hours later the professional sasquatch accidentally kicked a baby salmon into a tree while washing his clothes with his feet in the river, crying a little. The baby salmon fell out of the tree. It was dead. The professional sasquatch went to it and kneeled and pet it gently. He lay and held the baby salmon and looked at it in the moonlight with round eyes. The baby salmon wasn’t really a baby. It escaped from a fish farm a few days ago. It looked like a baby because its growth had been stunted because the fish farm had been receiving fish feed tainted with strong antibiotics, e-coli, and many other things. The salmon had been dead four hours when the professional sasquatch kicked it.

Untitled

by Aimee Bender

To J. Smith,

Please accept my resignation. The printer is broken. The stationery is gone. Malty is angry, angry, angry.

I tried.

Sincerely, Janet

Plotto

This particular version comes from Tin House, a Portland, Oregon based literary magazine that has revived the 1928 book Plotto: The Master Book of All Plots by William Wallace Cook. The book is an exhaustive reference of every plot imaginable, each explained in terms of (A) – the male protagonist and (B) – the female protagonist. Each week, the Tin House blog posts one of the Plotto plots and asks readers to submit a 500-word or less story using the prompt. Here are a couple of the prompts with the links to the winning story for that prompt. (Note: Seeing as it is 2012, Tin House doesn’t give a crap if (A) is male and (B) is female. Just use whatever number of protagonists the prompt requests, regardless of gender.)

• Week 1 Prompt: {A} a needy person picks up two pairs of cast-off shoes, one pair discarded by a clergyman, and the other pair by a man of reckless nature and “shady” reputation.
• Week 1 Winning Story

• Week 2 Prompt: {B} finds that the knob and lock on the door of a hotel bedroom are in disrepair; the lock apparently locks itself, and the knob will not turn.
• Week 2 Winning Story

Flash Nonfiction

As you can probably guess, there are also non-fiction versions of this oh-so-short prose form. Like fiction, nonfiction short shorts should encompass character, conflict & resolution. Just being truth is not enough to make a short piece of prose interesting. The rules of fiction apply to nonfiction, with the added intrigue of factuality. Here are a couple places where short nonfiction pieces are published regularly.

Six-Word Memoir

Similar to its fictional counterpart, the six-word memoir is just that, six true words about the writer’s life. Smith Magazine, an online “blog-a-zine” (their word, not mine) publishes six-word memoirs every day plus has regular contests for slightly longer, always true, memoirs from their readers. Here are a few recent six-word memoirs from the site.

Told I "overanalyze". Let me reflect.

By Contemplative

Book smart: know everything and nothing.

By Faexandrova

He wore dresses. This caused messes.

By John Kilmer-Purcell

Brevity

Brevity is a literary magazine devoted to that concept. As part of Lee Gutkind’s Creative Nonfiction enterprise, Editor Dinty Moore and his crew publish short, non-fiction pieces that run the gamut from a few words to a 750-word contest. The next submission deadline is May 1^st for 750-word pieces of female nonfiction in response to the VIDA Count—a recent stats round-up by Vida (an organization devoted to promoting female writers and literature) that discovered a disturbing imbalance in the number of female writers who appeared in the pages of some of this country’s most notable literary publications: Atlantic Monthly, Harpers, The New Yorker, etc. Click HERE for more information.

Here are a few of the shorter offerings from the latest issue (including one from a Penn State colleague of mine, Sheila Squillante. Yep, that’s a shout out.)

Candy

by Diane Seuss

When he led me to his bedroom and I saw the Playboy centerfolds papering the walls, my eyes widened and my mouth opened like I was Bluebeard’s young wife entering the forbidden closet where her predecessors hung from meat hooks.

On Fire

by Sheila Squillante

At breakfast this morning a story about forty-three children dead in a Mexican daycare fire.

On Narrative

by John Warner

The trick, the therapist tells my father, is to construct a scenario, a narrative that encompasses all of the pictures. Discrete bits of information are hard to hold on to. Stories we can hold forever.

The Contest – LitReactor Short Shorts

Since everyone else seems to have a version, I’m making a version just for LitReactor. The rules are simple:

• 10 words (because “LitReactor” has ten letters. You can start the words with any letter you want.)
• 2 sentences (because LitReactor has two parts in its name)
• Fiction or nonfiction (it’s up to the author to specify which)
• Must include the basic elements of plot
  • Protagonist
  • Conflict
  • Obstacles
  • Resolution

Entries must be posted as comments below. Each person gets one entry. One winner will be chosen by me and that person will win:

• A LitReactor mug
• A stack ‘o LitReactor stickers
• 6 month membership to the LitReactor site. (You can use it for yourself or for a friend.)
• The winning entry will be re-posted on LitReactor for all to admire.

The winner will be chosen a week from the posting date, so enter right away! I will contact the winner to get mailing information for prizes, etc.

Have fun & get writing!

About the author

Taylor Houston is a genuine Word Nerd living in Portland, OR where she works as a technical writer for an engineering firm and volunteers on the planning committee for Wordstock, a local organization dedicated to writing education.

She holds a degree in Creative Writing and Spanish from Hamilton College in Clinton, NY. In the English graduate program at Penn State, she taught college composition courses and hosted a poetry club for a group of high school writers.

While living in Seattle, Taylor started and taught a free writing class called Writer’s Cramp (see the website). She has also taught middle school Language Arts & Spanish, tutored college students, and mentored at several Seattle writing establishments such as Richard Hugo House. She’s presented on panels at Associated Writing Programs Conference and the Pennsylvania College English Conference and led writing groups in New York, Pennsylvania, and Colorado for writers of all ages & abilities. She loves to read, write, teach & debate the Oxford Comma with anyone who will stand still long enough.