More Musings on Microfiction

First of all, I want to say THANK YOU to Vocal for the Microfiction Magic challenge. I've benefitted from it hugely. It seems it was a success, so I'm sure I'm not alone.

I'm confident there will be more like it, which makes me happy. What will the next one will be? How many words will we have to play with? I suspect we will be given a narrower spec. A word we have to use, a genre, an object, or a theme, maybe.

I hope we aren't held in suspense too long, because if the challenge did have a downside it was this: my immediate gratification gland has enlarged significantly. I confess myself impatient.

Secondly, I know I won't place in this challenge. The sheer number of entries makes that an almost mathematical certainty. My eleven stories are a drop in the ocean, and an even smaller drop when you consider that probably only half of them even worked as microfiction. And there was a lot of stiff competition. Positively tumescent, I'd say. So my chances are nil, or near to, and I'm OK with that. I don't think we should enter these things to win. I think we should enter them for the enjoyment of writing, and to hone whatever piffling skill we might have.

Words are for writing, before they are for reading. They are for having.

Me, "Naked Truth"

I don't know what criteria Vocal will use to judge the submissions, but I hope the ones that place will be actual stories. By this, I mean fully contained fiction: beginning, middle, etc.

Something should happen. It's probably very short, very simple. But something.

Not a setting of a scene, or an intriguing situation. Not a concept, or an introduction. Any of those might be a stellar piece of writing, but surely we can agree they don't hit the brief.

I think, if anyone reads a micro-fiction and thinks, "oooh, this is good, what happens next?" then they haven't just read a microfiction. They've read the beginning of a great story.

Reading my own attempts with critical eyes, I know some of them don't cut the mustard when held to this standard. What about yours?

This doesn't just happen with micro fiction. People can ramble on for thousands of words and not tell an actual story. (Don't get me started on the Downton Abbey movie.)

That, right there, is the challenge. To tell an honest-to-goodness story in so few words.

You can cut a lot of chaff. In media res can work pretty well - leap right into the action and drag your reader in with you. Be clever. Pepper whatever backstory the reader might need throughout. Let it double as a trail of breadcrumbs to a big reveal, or a red herring. Along the way, slash entire paragraphs, and decimate what's left. But you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. You have to keep the key ingredients (beginning, middle, etc.), or your story falls flat. Worse - it isn't a story at all.

I want to use some stories as examples, but I don't want to single anyone out, so I'll use a couple of mine.

I'll start with a regular length story. My (not micro) take on The Three Little Pigs:

Spoilers follow.

Beginning - Mrs Pig throws the piglings out of the sty and tells them to make their own way in the world.

Middle - the pigs must find materials and build themselves homes. (Peril: they are hunted by a terrifying wolf. One of the pigs dies horribly.)

End - The youngest pig befriends the wolf, realising he is just hungry, and the other surviving sibling runs away to join the Foreign Legion.

My last micro, Dragon Scales:

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Beginning - Children are sent to collect dragon scales

Middle - One little girl is enthralled, and goes right into the lair to sleep on the egg. Peril: ummm... she's in the dragon's lair.

End - She wakes as the dragonlet, hatches and eats the body of the small human left there for her.

My not-a-micro micro: Bloom

I had a couple of people in the comments tell me this isn't flawed. As a nice piece of writing, or the scribblings of a nerd/nutter... no, maybe it's not. But as microfiction, yes it is. I can't list the beginning, middle, and end segments here because it doesn't have them. It only has a twist - a pleasing play on words. It's a metaphor, not a story. I enjoyed the imagery writing this, and I wanted to make a little tribute to all the stories that don't get read. In some cases, don't even get written. But, on reflection, it doesn't deserve to place in the challenge.

My personal favourite, probably too gory to place anywhere - 25 Seconds:

Beginning: A surgeon describes his job. Middle: he describes amputating a limb from a particular patient. (Peril: No aneasthetic or antiseptic, so pretty perilous.) End: the patient dies, so does an assistant and one other witness. Bonus - the twist: At the outset, he is painted almost like a sadist or murderer and it only becomes clear later (if I did my job right) that he's a surgeon. Extra bonus: it's a true story! There really is a documented historical operation with a 300% mortality rate.

Let's do another: "She Always Had Her Nose Buried in a Book"

This was so much fun! I loved writing this.

• Beginning: She wakes to find her favourite book.
• Middle: There are some challenges and distractions making reading tricky.
• End: She settles back to read her book.
• Bonus - the twist: She's dead. This is breadcrumbed throughout (dark, uncomfortable, narrow, sombre voices, crying, pattering, the word "Buried" in the title/her epitaph) but if you didn't catch those, the story concludes with silk and rotting flowers, just to ram that last nail home.

I worried that I'd shoehorned in too much detail, but some people did read it and think, "Oh, it's just a story about someone reading a story. How nice. We all love a good book don't we?" and apparently didn't read that she was buried. So then I worried I hadn't planted enough detail. I have no idea how the judges will read it.

I don't know whether Graduation Day works as a story. Let's have a look:

• Beginning: We are introduced to a crazy and sadistic kidnapper.
• Middle: Kidnapped children are dyed orange by being dipped in special Goo.
• End: It's revealed that the kidnapper is Willie Wonker, and this is the making of his Oompa Loompas. Does a "reveal" count as an ending, though?

Fun fact: I almost called this story "The Dying Room". Afterwards, I wish I had, but it was too late to change it by then.

I'm also not sure about my Top Story, "Mummy Took Me to Watch the Hanging Today".

• Beginning: A condemned man steps out on to the gallows.
• Middle: Perspective shifts to a fascinated little spectator, who describes the hanging and his parents' response to it.
• End: The child reveals his ambition to be a hangman. Does that count as an ending? I thought it did when I wrote it, but now I am less sure. 🤔

I mentioned that, out of my 11 entries, maybe half of them pass muster as an actual story. I wonder if this pattern is reflected across the challenge entries as a whole?

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Thank you for reading! Please do engage with a comment so I can reciprocate.

My question to you: Out of allllll the entries you've seen, which do you think has the strongest chance in the Microfiction challenge? Please link me to it and tell me why you think it could win 😁