Long-form writing is becoming a lost art during these days of short attention spans. With all the media content available to us, our time feels limited, so we want to maximize our consumption time. Blogs have been taken over in favor of quick social media posts. Twitter limits a tweet to 140 characters. Tik-Tok and Instagram promote short video clips, etc.
Microfiction is the natural progression of all this. It is considered to be even shorter than the short story genre. Much like a haiku, it forces concise wording to tell a story. There is no set word limit, but the general guideline is 100-101 words to tell your story. The trick is to make it meaningful enough to make an impact, as opposed to having your reader hop on to the next nano story.
How to start: Come up with an idea, create a rough draft, check your work count and revise to fit. Ulysses writing app is brilliant for this.
Where to publish: On your website first, of course. Then, save your work as a PDF and distribute to your interested followers, either for free or fee. Thereafter, use the same social media platforms if you must. There are even publishing houses looking for microfiction authors.
Finally: Microfiction is a tiny sub-genre (see what I did there?) in the writing/reading world. You won’t earn a lot of money from it, but the challenge itself can be very rewarding.
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