What Is Microfiction?
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Saying a lot by writing a little
Image credit: Dziana Hasanbekava from Pexels
Microfiction, also known as flash fiction, is the art of writing a complete story using few words. There are those who tell their tale in only fifty words. Some use one hundred or five hundred. Others say what they need to in a mere two sentences.
For those who write full-length novels, the thought of trimming their word count can seem daunting. How often do we hear writers cry out in exasperation when they’re writing a back cover blurb, citing the difficulty of condensing an entire world and story arc into fewer than a hundred words that will hook a reader into buying the book?
Flash fiction writers: Hold my beer.
Social media at top speed
When Twitter hit the social media scene, its gimmick was to force users to express their thoughts in 140 characters or fewer. Much like the advent of texting, at first the tweets were filled with abbreviations and text-speak to be mindful of character count, but after everyone got the hang of things, they settled into a wonderful habit of carefully choosing each word or phrase for the maximum impact with minimum wording.
Regardless of the newer guidelines that allow tweets of up to 280 characters, the takeaway here is that Twitter, for all its highs and lows of human nature, can teach a writer a lot about being direct with what’s being said. And being direct can teach a lot about the copyediting process, which is . . . *drumroll please* . . . essential to microfiction.
Yes, I had a point and I finally got to it.
Thoughts from a microfiction writer
Recently, I had a conversation with Ciofki, an author friend of mine who writes microfiction. His first two published books of what he calls Goth-Ick Tales contain stories of exactly 100 words apiece. I asked him how it is, exactly, that he decided to write stories with such a limited number of words.
Ciofki: “Microfiction was not something I originally started out writing. By nature, my writing is rather long winded, so I needed to develop the skills to immediately hook an audience. Microfiction is a genre that helps me to hone the ability to effectively tell a story quickly.”
Ciofki’s motivation for concise writing is something authors are told all the time by their editors. Whether you’re writing a lengthy tome (because let’s face it, Really Big Books have earned the title of “tome,” don’t you think?) or a haiku, you want to hook your reader right away. Readers today are savvy, and don’t want to waste their time on a slow-moving story. They may not even make it past chapter one if you don’t give them a good reason to keep going.
In flash fiction, your “chapter one” essentially boils down to the first line. There’s no time for a slow buildup of character introductions and world-building details. The reader needs to glean all that information from your opening sentences.
Characters, deleting, and rule breaking
You may notice that microfic doesn’t typically have more than one or two characters in each story. Simply put, there isn’t much room for more. Author J. Timothy King says something he keeps in mind when writing flash fiction is that the qualities of your one main character focus themselves on supporting their single compelling need (“10 Flash Fiction Writing Tips”).
Ciofki expands on the “nothing is wasted” idea, saying, “The hardest part is determining which rules I need to break in telling my stories. Since they’re brief, it’s hard to follow the conventional rules regarding writing. Many times it’s necessary to bend or break a rule to express the correct emotional theme. One hundred words does not give a writer a lot of leeway to do that without coloring outside the lines.”
When I asked how many of his stories were discarded or are waiting for the right moment, Ciofki estimated that around 30 percent of his stories are not published, due to being “more extreme than others, or touch[ing] upon subjects that most readers will find offensive or taboo.” He recognizes that this is most likely a common dilemma among authors. “Almost all writers have to do some sort of self-censoring in order to appeal to their audiences if they wish to be viable in the marketplace.”
Plotting or pantsing?
Can a microfiction writer actually plot? The story arc is so quick that it almost seems impossible. With a novel of average length (depending on genre, of course—see my handy chart), even the pantsiest of pantsers will have a vague idea of where the story will start, peak, and wrap up. But I’ve always wondered how a flash writer thinks of a story idea and then boils it down so far.
I asked Ciofki about this—whether he starts with a theme in mind, or whether the stories begin to revolve around an unplanned theme. His second collection of Goth-Ick Tales, Woe Side Diner, has a handful of stories in the diner, but the whole volume isn’t themed exclusively around it.
He replied, “I’m really more of a pantster when it comes to most of my microsagas. Sometimes a simple phrase, or even a word, can be the genesis of a story, and the tale forms around it. Naturally, it doesn’t apply to all my stories, as some are plotted around themes. Those are usually multiple stories in a series. They can be fun to do, but generally, I stick to the single event tales.”
Write a lot, remove a lot
I’ve seen the advice “write long, then go short” for writing microfiction. When I asked Ciofki about whether this advice is something he follows, he said no . . . and yes:
“When I create one of my microsagas, (as I like to call them) the story usually takes shape in slightly under 100 words. There is a technique that I use. I call it structured creativity. Using it, I can envision the story in snapshot format. Then I fill in the rest of the story. But if I write longer microfiction, then, yes, writing long and then going short is the way I write.”
In an interview on Damyanti Biswas’ Daily (w)rite, short story writer Tania Hershman sums it up in a sentence: “Writing short stories is about learning how little you need, about what isn’t written as much as about what is on the page.”
As an editor, I’ve worked on the occasional manuscript that is filled with overwriting, and one of my goals when I go through each chapter is to remove anything that’s redundant, already implied, or able to be understood by context. Though those manuscripts aren’t flash fiction, they can certainly benefit from finding out how little is actually needed on the page.
Entice with your title
Microfiction titles should convey all the information you need without actually giving anything away. Sounds easy, right? Some writers really sweat their titles, and others I’ve seen don’t really seem to care much. My opinion, of course, but I feel the shorter titles are better for shorter works. An overly long title for a 500-word flash almost makes the story itself seem anticlimactic.
Most of Ciofki’s microfiction titles are a single word, or two on rare occasions. He says, “My titles are usually related to the principal theme of the story, but often they’re a play on words. Sometimes I’ll twist the meaning of the title, so I don’t give away the story before the audience can read it. It’s a little game I play.”
I’ve found his titles entertaining and sometimes haunting, and on occasion have thought they were as much of the punchline as the story itself. The kind of title I reread after I finish the story, chuckle to myself, and think, Now that’s clever.
End it with a punch . . . or don’t
One of the big differences with the way microfiction plays out is that the end most often doesn’t come at the end. There’s a final line, sure, but it’s not usually a punchline. I like them occasionally, though, and Ciofki’s stories will, once in a while, have a final line that makes me laugh or wonder why I didn’t see that coming. But overall, the main event happens early and then we’re left to chew on it a bit with the final lines.
The flash fiction audience
There are many types of flash or microfiction, as it’s not unique to any particular genre. However, it does lend itself well to horror or suspense. Readers of micro-horror enjoy being creeped out, disgusted, or downright terrified, all in a few sentences.
When I asked Ciofki about who he sees as his ideal reader, his thoughts ran along these lines: “My stories appeal to a niche audience, so the person I am attempting to connect with is someone who wants to take a psychotic sojourn for a couple of minutes at a time. My concept of horror isn’t always a “jump scare” tale, but more of an examination of the disquieting unknown, or a feeling of unease. I like to take the reader on a brief ride and give them an alternate view of reality.”
Truthfully, that’s my favorite style of horror. The kind where I’m left vaguely uneasy and can’t pinpoint why, where I find myself reading closer and closer to a corner where nothing can possibly fit behind me, lights as bright as possible. Longer books will leave me with that feeling for days as I make my way through a novel, but a short, sharp dose of it still packs a wallop.
Here’s where you can find some good microfiction
Ciofki’s books, Goth-IckTales Vol. 1: 101 Damnations and Goth-Ick Tales Vol. 2: Woe Side Diner, are available through these links on Amazon. Treat yourself to twice the unease in half the time!
