What is a micro story?

I was first introduced to this idea on Jeffrey Callison's Sacramento NPR radio interview show called Insight. He interviewed Jason Sinclair Long about his blog "Flash Fiction 365". You can hear the interview here.

The challenge is to write a micro-story each day. The length of the story is determined by throwing a pair of dice, preferably of different colors. One color represents the tens digit and the other the ones digit. So the story can be from 11 to 66 words. Of course some lengths are left out using this method. You could also use one die and throw it twice. Or use a die with 8 sides. Or you can do what I did and create a random number generator in Excel. This method doesn't miss any of the numbers. Mine will return a random number between 11 and 99. I am happy to share the formula if you email me.

The title is not part of the word count. Most word processors have a word count function that is very useful. You can start with a title or add it later or you can have someone suggest a title. Even though the original idea is to write a story, I plan to include poetry and perhaps essay.
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Friday, May 07, 2010

Story: 149
Words: 70

Title: Synthia Ponders Her Creation

Synthia looked at her reflection as only an android could. It had no particular meaning to her except that her face resembled that of a human. Rightfully so, she thought, since she had been created by them. Still, it was curious why they would do so. Of all the possibilities, did they choose to make her look human?

“Why did you create me to be just another human?” she asked.

Comment: Back to Synthia, the android. There are more Synthia stories in the archives for February.
Posted by energymaster at 1:00 AM

1 comment:

  1. Edwin9:30 AM

    good use of language,
    but until I know the larger context,
    I'm something short of loving it.
    Edwin

    ReplyDelete

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