Micro fiction is a subgenre of fiction consisting of very short stories, often under 1,000 words. It includes all elements of a fully realized story and can be as short as 55 words. It is a format for fictional storytelling and often hosted on websites and in magazines, with prizes awarded for the best works. Ernest Hemingway famously wrote a six-word story to demonstrate the brevity of his writing style.
Micro fiction is a subgenre of fiction that consists of stories of notable brevity, often much shorter than many other short stories. There is no particular fixed length requirement for such stories, although it is generally accepted that most pieces of fiction in this category are under 1,000 words. A few particular types of microfiction have arisen over the years, including those that are exactly a certain length, like 100 words or 55 words, and those that are pushed to be as short as possible. This type of fiction is set apart from other types of short works, such as haiku, in that they often have all the common elements of a fully realized story.
Sometimes called flash fiction, micro fiction can be considered a subgenre or format for fictional storytelling. The only essential aspect of this type of story is that it must be extremely short while still telling a real story. There are a number of Internet sites and some magazines that host such stories, and prizes and awards may be given each year to the best microfiction works. Many of these sites and publications set particular standards for these works, including maximum word counts.
There is no particular word count required for a piece of microfiction, although many people consider anything over 1,000 words too long for the format. Many writers of such fiction strive for a story of no more than 500 words, and other writers prefer a length of less than 150 words. There are a number of different names for certain types of microfiction, usually based on the exact length of those works. “55 Fiction,” for example, is a work of fiction exactly 55 words long, while “Drabble” and “69er” are works of exactly 100 and 69 words, respectively.
Microfiction is typically distinguished from some other forms of short writing in that it includes all the elements of a fully realized story, but in a very small form. These works often have at least one character, with an action occurring and a story resolution. All of this takes place within a very short work, however, and often much is left to the reader’s imagination to fill in the blanks within the prose. A famous example of microfiction comes from an apocryphal story about the American writer Ernest Hemingway confronted with the brevity of his writing style. To demonstrate that even a short work could express a complex idea, presumably, he concocted a six-word story: “For sale, children’s shoes, never worn.”
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