Lately I've been fascinated by micro fiction. Perhaps it's because we are nearing the end of the semester and I had too much to read, therefore, I appreciated when one of my professors gave us micro fictions to read. Pif magazine has a great post about the essentials of micro-fiction. It is a new way of reading and writing wait for an image to form, before reading the next word.It has even been brought to my attention that micro-fiction is taking place through tweeter as well. How crazy it is to get a story done within 140 words. Crazy, but not impossible.
I found this type of writing refreshing. Having every day a new microfiction assignment helps improve ones creativity as well as helps one to cultivate the discipline of writing.
This picture is one of hilobrow micro-fic contest winners.
This type of fiction reminds me a lot of an article I read a long time ago in The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/22/081222fa_fact_goodyear). It reports on these Japanese young people (mostly females) have gained fame through writing "cell-phone novels." They "publish" their novels 140 characters (or whatever the social networking site's limit is) at a time, and some have a massive following. Some of them have even published traditional paper books that have sold better than traditional literature. I think you have to pay to read the article since it's old now, but it's definitely worth a read if you're into this micro-fiction idea. Back when I read it, I wondered if this would ever be an occurrence in the States, but so far for the most part we just use Twitter to update our friends about our bowel movements and the like. Figures.
ReplyDeleteI think it's a great idea to use twitter's 140 character limit as a constraint for writing. For me, writing fiction is sometimes paralyzing and having limits can make the process less so Check out http://nanoism.net for a blog of some stories like this. Have you heard Ernest Hemingway's famous six-word short story? "For sale: baby shoes, never worn".
ReplyDeleteNext year, I think it would be nice if DIN accepted micro fiction. I think that would be an excellent addition to the magazine.
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