is short the new black?
By Celeste Ng
Flash fiction is rising in prominence both online and in print. (For an introduction to the form, see Sophie Powell’s review of The Field Guide to Flash Fiction.) Then came the six-word story trend. And now there’s 7×20, a Twitter-zine publishing short stories and fiction of 140 characters or less.
In fact, 7×20 is just one of several Twitter-based short-story outlets. Mediabistro notes that such sites have been springing up everywhere. Some, like Nanoism, even pay. Here are four complete stories:
She shows him her wedding ring and he just shrugs. I would be more interested in you if my ring bothered you, she says. I never win, he says. (from Arjun Basu)
The warring world below my capsule fell into nucleur death. For ten months, I sought the courage to die. Then, I heard a knock at my door. (from Thaumatrope, a sci-fi/fantasy/horror Twitter-zine)
The tiny larynx implant was perfect, the speech therapist exhausted. The squirrel’s pent up diatribes poured forth in marathon chatterings. (from 7×20)
Sunday morning includes a laptop, reruns, and naked breasts covered with chip crumbs instead of your lips. You snore through opportunity. (from Nanoism)
What say you, fiction writers: can a satisfying short story be told in one tweet? Is this extreme concision a good exercise in cutting to the heart of a story, or is 140 characters simply too short to be complete?
As a self-appointed critic, I’d say this is symptomatic of the erosion of the narrative form that has accompanied the growth of electronic media. Short stories are limited enough, in my opinion, but a story in 140 characters is a joke. At this rate, a sustained thought will only last 2 seconds within a few years.
I am reminded of what D.H. Lawrence said about America shortly after arriving in 1922: “It only excites the outside of me. The inside it leaves more isolated and stoic than ever.”
I vote for more 400+ page novels and less solipsistic tweets.
I share a lot of Paul’s knee-jerk aversions to one-tweet stories, but are these even stories? Are they poetry? What makes a string of text belong to either of those categories?
Keeping it short:
No.
Yes.
Some are calling this “hint fiction” — there was even a contest not too long ago:
http://www.robertswartwood.com/?page_id=78
As a self described flasher (flash fiction writer), I appreciate the challenge of conveying a great story in under 1,000 words and I think flash has merit.
Twitting stories does not. Not to me. They’re commercial snippets at best and Twitter driven drivel at the worst.
But it does speak to a person’s desire to create and as a writer, maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to impugn the creativity of another.
It is tempting though.
[...] a primer on Twitterfiction from the FWR blog [...]