Tricks or treats
Hi everyone, it’s Asha. I’m hosting the Microprose Challenge this month. Grab a canapé and a beverage of your choice and come on in!
Microprose is one of the most challenging forms to write. You have a short word limit to capture your reader’s interest and convey the most meaningful parts of your story.
Here, in no particular order, are four useful tips to keep in mind while shaping a Microprose entry:
- Don’t give less story, and don’t summarise. It sounds contradictory given the short word limit, but this tip is really just a nudge to use more efficient writing. Use words that convey greater meaning, or are more exact. That doesn’t mean you have to use big or unusual words, but do make careful choices about the words and phrases you use. Click on this link to read In a House Beseiged, a 65-word story by Lydia Davis that uses very simple prose to convey a great deal of action and characterisation.
- Show, don’t tell. You’re probably rolling your eyes at this one. It’s the most regularly given advice in writing, and also the most often misunderstood. All writing has to have some elements of telling, that’s the exposition that let’s the reader know what the background and setting are. However, compelling microprose has very little exposition. The reader usually encounters a microprose piece right in the middle of the action, and is driven forward by imagery and emotion. The most famous example of this is the six-word story usually attributed to Ernest Hemingway; For sale: baby shoes, never worn.
- Don’t cut corners on technique. You still need a plot, (a limited number of) characters and (limited) setting. Don’t lose these important elements just because you’ve also got a limited word count. You don’t need to explicitly delineate the setting, but you should still convey a sense of it. Keep the number of characters very low (one or two) and focus on the point of view of one of them. Your microprose should be a complete story with a character arc. Show the reader how your character has grown or changed.
- Edit, edit, edit, and also edit. Did I mention editing your work? Check your spelling, make sure you have a consistent use of tense, verb agreement, and you’re using the right word to convey your meaning. Confirm that your title is relevant to your story (don’t waste a chance to give context or setting by naming it “Micro 373”). Oh, and make sure you didn’t edit your story out of your story: trade micros with a friend to make sure you both understand what’s going on and who did what to whom where and when. Give it all a final glance before submitting it to the grid. It would be a shame to miss out on an editor’s pick because of a spelling mistake or grammatical error that could easily have been picked up in editing.
What’s the buzz?
The Scripps National Spelling Bee (see what I did there? Buzz… bee) was on in the U.S.A. last Thursday. So, for this month’s prompt I’m asking you to come up with your best Microprose piece using the the Merriam-Webster Dictionary (click the link to go to the tweet) definition of the word sapience (click the link to go to the Merriam-Webster definition and pronunciation guide) in 49 words.
sapience (noun): wisdom, sagacity
A few rules:
- Total wordcount is exactly 49, including the prompt word. You provide the other 48.
- The word must be used exactly as-is. (“Sapience,” not “sapiences”, “sapient” or “sapiens.”) (No, really, we don’t want to send you a love letter about your perfectly good story over this, but we will if we have to. It’s a noun. Don’t adjectivize it, pluralize it, or mess with it in any way.)
- The word may be part of dialogue.
- The Merriam-Webster definition of the word must be used. (You don’t have to include the definition in your text, but you must use the word in a way that fits the definition.)
Good luck on the grid!
This is the badge you need:
Below is the YeahWrite badge you need for this month’s microprose challenge. Under the badge is a few lines of code. See that? Copy it and then paste it into the “text” or HTML view of your post editor. If you don’t copy it exactly, the image will not appear correctly in your post, and you will receive an error message when you submit the post to Inlinkz. If you have any questions regarding adding this code to your post or website, please contact us at editors@yeahwrite.me.
Need a hand?
Microprose sounds easy. After all, how hard can it really be to write a story with fewer than 100 words incorporating a prompt or two? But it turns out it’s our hardest challenge to really get right. Whether you’re a seasoned micropro or a brand new microwriter, it’s worth taking a minute to glance through the tips and tricks our editors have put together, like this quick refresher on what makes a micro great, or this one on how to incorporate mandatory prompts into adjudicated challenges. Make sure you make it to the vote this week: check your wordcount (we count those footnotes!) and prompts!
The microprose challenge ends in:
Day(s)
:
Hour(s)
:
Minute(s)
:
Second(s)
How to submit and fully participate in the Microprose Challenge
Basic YeahWrite guidelines: must be in response to the prompt found in the introductory post, i.e. must use the exact definition of the word sapience given by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary; your entry can be dated no earlier than Wednesday, June; nonfiction, fiction, whatever, but not poetry, told in exactly 49 words. You may enter only one microstory per weekly challenge.
How to submit and fully participate in the challenge:
- Please grab the code beneath the microprose badge in the body of this week’s post and paste it into the HTML view of your entry;
- Follow the Inlinkz instructions after clicking “add your link” to upload your entry to this week’s challenge grid;
- Your entry should appear immediately on the grid if you don’t receive an error message;
- Please make the rounds to read all the entries in this week’s challenge; and
- Consider turning off moderated comments and CAPTCHA on your own blog.
Submissions for this week’s challenges will close on Wednesday at 10pm ET. Voting will then open immediately thereafter and close on Thursday at 10pm ET. The winners, as always, will be celebrated on Friday.
Thank you for sharing with us your hard work! Good luck in the challenge…
Loading InLinkz ...About the author:
Asha keeps moving from one side of the world to the other. Her most recent move has taken her back to Perth, Western Australia where she grew up. She lives near the beach but hates sand between her toes. It’s a real conundrum. Asha began blogging at YeahWrite in October 2014 with this post, and YeahWrite was lucky to pull her on board as a Contributing Editor in December 2016. She is currently working on a novelette that grew from a series of flash fiction pieces. Asha is published in a variety of places including Modern Loss, PANK, Dead Housekeeping, and SheKnows. You can find her inconsistent blogging at Parenting In The Wilderness, or at her fiction blog, FlAsha Tales.
