Microfiction: A Story in a Few Sentences

Microfiction is the shortest end of the short story: a complete piece of under three hundred words, and often under a hundred. The shortest of all are six words long, and they work. The length is not a gimmick; it is a demand that every word take a job, because there is no room for a word that only decorates. Where flash fiction can still carry a scene, microfiction usually carries one image and one implication. The reader does the work of the story, and the writer's craft lies in leaving exactly the right things out. Titles are often part of the text: a six-word story with the right title holds a whole situation between the two. Characteristic techniques - A single image, held still, with all its consequences implied. - The last sentence as the whole story's turn, so every earlier word points at it. - A title that adds information the sentences do not give. - Concrete nouns and plain verbs; no adjectives doing heavy lifting. - A refusal to explain the situation, ever. An original example, written for this platform Instructions for the House Sitter Water on Tuesdays and Fridays. The cat will not come to you; leave the tin open and look away. If the phone rings after ten, let it ring. Her voice is on the machine and I have not the courage to erase it. How the example works Four short sentences, and the fourth turns the whole piece: what looked like a list of household instructions is a person who cannot yet delete a dead woman's voice. Nothing is explained, no feeling is named, and the title has already told the reader where the narrator is going. Cut the last sentence and it becomes an ordinary note; keep it and it is a story. Practical guidance Write twenty of them in an hour, then keep one. Compose the last sentence first and build backwards from it, so every earlier sentence can be doing work towards it. Take the title as a line of the poem or the story, not as a label. Exercise to try Write ten pieces of under fifty words about the same room, each turning on a different object. Keep one and destroy the rest; then write the title last, and make it say what the story refuses to say. Revision tips Cut every word that can go and read what is left to hear whether it still stands. Check that the final sentence changes the meaning of the piece rather than concluding it. If any sentence explains a feeling, delete it. If the piece works without its title, the title is not yet doing its job.