Very Short Stories

First published in "Very Short Stories", 2011.

Around the time when Twitter was becoming big, there was a rush of twitter fiction, “very short stories” that fit into the 140 character limit of Twitter. As a haiku writer I gave it a good go but haiku and Twitter fiction, while both very short forms, don’t contain all that much overlap. Haiku in particular is less about narrative than capturing the moment, while Twitter fiction is about containing narrative within a few short sentences:

Tell me a story, she said. One about a city. Once upon a time in Glasgow, I said. Heard it, she said. Tell me one about Sao Paulo.

I wrote a bunch, many I’m still proud of. Back in 2011 my friend Simon Sylvester was asked to put together a pamphlet for Social Media Week and picked three of mine for inclusion. The theme for each story was one of the cities hosting Social Media Week. Simon, a master of the form, published a whole collection of these called 140 Characters which you can still find on Amazon.

We stopped for gas. He didn’t even get out of the car, just drew a line through ‘Bogota’. I paid, kicked up dust. Not long now.

I haven’t done many of these in the last ten years. Twitter increasing the character limit spoiled the fun, and I prefer actually exploring narrative than hinting at it. Still, writing with limitations is always a good practice to get into, and it can make you feel productive after a hard day of long form writing.

“Thank you, Beirut, good night!” Backstage the band agreed the tour manager would have to go.