Tag Archives: News

NEWS: FiftyWordStories.com Changes Gears

It’s been a lot of fun writing stories with exactly fifty words, but new frontiers of microfiction are calling. Upon seeing the success of a site like www.sixwordstories.net, I’ve realized that the important part of the term “microfiction” is the prefix “micro”. What people really want are short stories, the shorter the better!

So from today forward, this site will begin posting stories even shorter than fifty words.

The first of these stories will go up shortly. It will consisty of exactly ten words. Where will things go from there? I’m not sure yet, but I know we’re going to test the very limits of this genre known as “microfiction”.

NEWS: SixWordStories.net

If you’re a fan of microfiction, then you’ll know that part of the challenge is telling a story in such a small space. If you really want to challenge yourself, you reduce the number of words available to you.

Enter www.SixWordStories.net. This website, run by Pete Berg, is dedicated to probably the shortest format of fiction I’ve ever encountered–stories told in exactly six words. You thought fifty words was hard? Try reducing your word quota by 88%! (Yes, I did the math on that. On a calculator.)

Pete and the site staff write some stories themselves, take reader submissions, and also share six-word stories they’ve found out in the Great Wide Internet, written by famous authors like Cory Doctorow, Orson Scott Card, and Ursula K. Le Guin. This includes the most famous, and probably first, six-word story, by Ernest Hemingway:

“For sale: baby shoes. Never used.”

There are some great stories on the site, so for some more microfictiony goodness, head over to www.SixWordStories.com now!

NEWS: Stories Start Today!

Today, www.fiftywordstories.com officially starts updating with one new fifty-word story every single day!

The first story is scheduled to go up in the next fifteen minutes.

Are You Ready For This!?

Tell your friends!

NEWS: Fifty Word Stories dot com

FiftyWordStories.com is a project I’m starting as an alternative to Project 365, because I’m a writer, not a photographer.

My goal is to post one new, original 50-word story every day for a year. I won’t necessarily be writing one story every day–some days I’ll write more than one, and some days I won’t write any–but I’ll make sure one gets posted to the site each day.

Start reading here!

I’m not the first person to have this idea. For some other fifty-word stories, check out these sites:
http://fiftywords.com/
http://www.tangents.co.uk/50words/

There’s some stuff on those sites worth reading, but I think I can do it better and more consistently. We’ll find out one way or another over the next year or so!