So I really hadn't been exposed to much flash fiction before joining LitReactor, and I have grown to thoroughly enjoy the format. I was wondering though... is there a place for writing even shorter than flash fiction?
For example: I have friend who makes hilarious facebook posts. They're well-written and well thought out, always get a ton of attention and laughs, and they're usually about 3-8 paragraphs long. I've seen some as short as 2 paragraphs. Some aren't funny, but are just insightful, or conjure specific imagery.
It all made me think that there might be a place for something like that in this day and age. Maybe a novelette filled with them. Like poetry, someone could even strategically and artfully craft 2 paragraphs that tell an entire story. It would be a lesson in efficiency.
Hell, maybe something like this already exists. It's late and I'm rambling.
On here somewhere, there's an essay about Micro Fiction, which I guess is just shorter Flash Fiction. Also, in the forum somewhere is the Game of Threes, where people have to write stories in 3 paragraphs.
I was thinking how cool a collection of Micro Stories would be, like a short-story anthology but with all of these little, easily-digestible things. Would be pretty rad. But maybe it's been done and I just don't know.
Check out Lydia Davis. She's one of the best.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120953449
Twitter fiction comes to mind specifically. Though if your follower count is anything like mine, you'll have people acting like copy cats.
I prefer fiction between 500 and 1,000 words anyway. For books, chapters that are between 1,000 and 1,500 words.
I used to do full length short fiction, that was a collection of micro-fiction.
I seemed to have neglected to mention twitter epistolaries. Where it's a collection of short stories that are told in twitter feeds.
I've been sitting on that Lydia Davis book for a while now, so eager to dive in.
I used to tweet a ton of microfiction; need to get back on that.
As far as outlets for microfiction, my friend Gayle Towell runs Microfiction Mondays, appropriately enough. I own three volumes of The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories by Joseph Gordon-Levitt's hitRECord community, as well as Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure. I also have Smash the Hammer, but haven't gotten around to reading that one yet.
I purchased Anit-Twitter by Harrold Jaffe. It is a collection of 50 word stories.
Flash fiction is generally considered 1,000 words or less. Micro-fiction word limit is usually considered lower than for flash fiction but I don't think the cut-off for it is well defined, and occasionally I hear the two terms used interchangeably. Here are a few litmags with low word count limits:
Journal of Compressed Creative Arts- 600 words
Camroc Review, Vestal Review, Apocrypha & Abstractions, Dr. T.J. Eckleburg Review, Yellow Mama, First Stop Fiction - 500 words
Linnet's Wings- 400 words
Nano Fiction- 300 words
Boston Literary Magazine- 250 words
Dogzplot- 200 words
100 Word Story- 100 words
Nailpolish Stories- 25 words (title should be a nail polish color)
Short, Fast, and Deadly- 420 characters (not words)
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I'm sure there are some single author micro-fiction collections on Amazon, although there are many more flash fiction collections. Here are a couple of multi-author micro-fiction anthologies:
Micro Fiction (250 words) edited by Jerome Stern
Hint Fiction (25 words) edited by Robert Swartwood