Micromanagement: 4 Benefits of Writing Tiny
I’ve been writing Twitter microfiction under the #vss365 hashtag for roughly two months. This is my first experience writing at this very limited scale, and I’m finding it both fun and educational. I’m by no means an expert, but there is definite value in trying to cram a story into like 50 words. Here are a few of the benefits, as I see it, from writing microfiction.
- Savage self-editing. One of the best parts of writing microfiction, at least for me, is how it forces you to be utterly brutal and precise with word choice and sentence structure. What I mean is it’s largely an exercise of stripping an idea down to its bare bones so that that only the most vital words remain, and when you do it right, there’s a beautiful simplicity to the piece. Depending on the kind of fiction you write (and how you write it), that’s a skill that translates to longer works, from flash fiction to novels. I tend to have a fairly Spartan style anyway, and I find writing microfiction still forces me to knuckle down and make those hard choices (almost always for the better).
- Stretching your literary legs. If you’re writing microfiction based on a prompt like I’m doing, I think you’ll find yourself writing outside your comfort zone a lot. Yeah, I still fall back on my favorite horror genre tropes a fair amount, but I also find myself dipping a toe into other genres and even subjects approaching lit-fic (hell, I’ve even written a few limericks). That’s maybe not something I would attempt with a longer piece, but with micro I feel like I can experiment a little.
- Story seed generator. Look, it’s pretty difficult to write a complete story in 50 words (it is possible, though), but even if you don’t end up with a perfect micro, you might end up with a pretty solid idea that can be expanded into a longer piece. I’ve written something like fifty or sixty micros over the last few months, and I’m already developing two of them into longer stories. What’s better, they’re both a little different than what I usually write (back to point two) and might let me hit some markets my work normally isn’t a good fit for.
- Easy to share. Obviously, I’m writing microfiction on Twitter, so every piece is getting shared to the folks who follow me. That’s a big benefit because it’s an opportunity to potentially let a lot of people see my work in easy bite-sized chunks. It has also introduced me to a fantastic group of writers and THEIR awesome work. Let me tell you, there are some supremely talented folks writing microfiction on Twitter under the #vss365 hashtag (and others), and I strongly urge you to head out there and take a look.
Again, I’m no expert on microfiction, but in just a short amount of time I’ve found the practice of writing tiny to be immensely beneficial. I plan to keep at it on a daily basis, and if you’d like to follow my microfiction journey, follow me on Twitter @Aeryn_Rudel.
Do you write microfiction? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject in the comments.
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