Ark of the Lost Angels

Microfiction is tricky to write. I recently participated in a microfiction challenge, and as someone who usually tells a story in upwards of sixty-five thousand words, capturing something in sixty-five, it was incredibly challenging. However, it is a helpful skill to have.

The piece I wrote was a small scene, and the challenge it was for was about showing magic. I managed to pack a lot into the scene. The story was simple, it was told from the perspective of a witch’s lover as they sat in a romantic atmosphere. She lit candles with a ball of flame that she shot around the room, while putting more ice into her drink, and then intercepting the ball of flame with more ice which caused both to disappear in a wisp of water vapor. There was only one line that gave away the romantic idea, and it was that the witch kissed the narrator. But that one line contextualized the drink, the candles, and the whole situation in general.

So the challenge was creating a fleshed out situation in as few words as possible. As I mentioned beforehand, I typically use a much longer experience, so it’s good practice to keep sight of the important parts of larger stories by boiling one down to a much smaller piece.

Writing a larger story takes difficulty to set up, and make sure there is enough content to fill the idea of a full novel, or novella, or short story. It means that the characters have much more to develop, the conflict needs to be difficult to solve, and the antagonist needs to be more fleshed out. In microfiction, the streamlining means that the story just needs to be entertaining and fit its tone.

Microfiction can also add in the fact that by giving less information, it will get more people talking. People don’t talk about the greatest solved mysteries, they talk about the unsolved ones. Where there are questions, people will always seek to answer them. The ambiguity of microfiction can lead to multiple people coming up with different ideas as to how it is supposed to work, and that further fuels the conversation.

Overall, microfiction has its place, and it serves as good practice, despite not being my preferred cup of tea. I’m overly ambitious when it comes to writing, and I see bigger pictures, and like to explore a lot of territory and flesh out my worlds in ways that most microfiction writers don’t typically dream about. My idea of questioning “why is this happening?” And following the chain of reasoning and then answering all of those questions within a piece are not as conducive to microfiction.