The Outer Limits

Introduction

There are forty-eight communities on Vocal where we can publish stories (forty-nine if you include Tips and Guides in Resources, but there has been nothing posted in there for two years).

When I started, all communities required a six-hundred-word minimum, except poetry, which required only a hundred words.

Then Something Happened

There was the high-ku challenge, which meant for poetry the lower limit was dismissed, although my one-word piece was dismissed, though maybe it was because it was me 😁

Most of the winners were not true haiku, but Vocal seems ambivalent about the rules.

That was followed by a limerick challenge:

Then there was the Microfiction Magic Challenge, which effectively removed the lower limit for Fiction:

A few new Communities have been added, and these are all the communities with a zero-word lower limit.

This got me thinking that often the shorter stories are more likely to be fully read and appreciated.

When I write documents for work, I include a lot of white space because that makes the reader more likely to read everything on the page rather than skim-read it.

While the upper limits are high, I suppose it is good that other communities have the six-hundred-word minimum. Imagine if BEAT were zero, and we just got lists of favourite songs. Confessions and Journal need to have a high minimum, and if communities are article-based, then they need a high minimum.

Conclusion

This is going to sit in WRITERS, so the two hundred and fifty words is enough for that community.

Thank you for reading, and I would love to hear your thoughts.

I used the intro from "The Outer Limits" as an introduction to this piece.