I hope you have found my posts on writing interesting or even stimulating. In the days of my youth I was only aware of two types of writing: prose and poetry.
I have gained wisdom with the years and am now aware of many different types like Haiku, a very short form of Japanese poetry; and limerick, a form of poetry in five-line meter with a strict rhyme scheme and humorous.
In fiction there is micro fiction - prose of less than 400 words; short stories and novellas - prose longer than a short story but shorter than a novel. Then there are new types and terminologies for prosaic works like 'drabble' which is a short work of fiction of around one hundred words in length. The purpose of the drabble is brevity, testing the author's ability to express interesting and meaningful ideas in a confined space. It is thought that it originated in the UK science fiction fandom in the 1980s; the 100-word format was established by the University of Birmingham SF Society, taking a term from Monty Python's 1971 Big Red Book. In the book, "Drabble" was described as a word game where the first participant to write a novel was the winner. In order to make the game possible in the real world, it was agreed that 100 words would suffice.
In drabble contests, participants are given a theme and a certain amount of time to write. Even shorter than drabble is 'dribble'... a story in 50 words.
Words are a method of communication with the purpose of explanation, conversation or request and used daily. How could we survive in modern society without words, vocabulary, language? However, as a writer, I find them fascinating, beautiful and something to be used with affection and admiration. It is an interesting challenge to create a sentence and even better to create a story in a set number of words. Did you enjoy my humble offerings of the six word story last week? Did you manage to write your own?
The term flash fiction?
Flash fiction is an umbrella term used to describe any fictional work of extreme brevity, including the six-word story 140-character stories, also known as twitterature, the dribble (50 words), the drabble (100 words), and sudden fiction (750 words). Some commentators have also suggested that some flash fiction possesses a unique literary quality, e.g. the ability to hint at or imply a larger story.
(Definition taken from Wikipedia)
Next week I will be writing about dialogue. Until then, have fun. Why not try being creative with your own flash fiction?
Lady M
