About 55-Fiction.


You should probably read this first.

Capture Date	:	02:01, Sep 26, 2003
Notes	:	--- 55-Fiction: "55 fiction" is the art of writing a short story in 55 words or less. At first glance, it sounds ridiculous but if you read a few you may be suprised just how much you can say in such a short space. People are generally verbose. Books with only 50 pages don't tend to sell very well and people don't seem to think much of an article that has just a hundred words as opposed to a thousand. We are taught to summarise suprisingly verbosely in English lessons, I remember often being given 250-300 words to summarise something I could happily have done in 100 but ironically, I would have been told off for using such few words. A nice thing about 55 fiction is that any summary will usually be longer than the actual work. If you read for pleasure and to kill a few hours then verbosity can be a fine thing. Lots of old English authors were paid by the word and this shows in their books - Dickens and Collins are hugely verbose but not many people will deny that generally they are a good read. There does seem to be a tendency these days for authors to go a tad overboard though - Carrying two Steven King books, a Tom Clancy book and maybe for good measure, a Brian Lumley book will like as not give you a hernia; they are great for pressing wild flowers but as reading material and aeroplane hand luggage, things are getting a little ridiculous. The James Bond books, and the Saint books are nice and thin, why does Clancy think his need to be 20 times thicker? They are certainly not 20 times better... 55 word fiction is an art form that is fun and educational to try. Because of the lack of room for description the plot is foremost and nothing else really matters - If the plot aint good, there's no story but, the good thing is, if the story is crap, you only waste a minute finding out. --- The History of 55-Fiction: In 1986, A Californian magazine called The New Times started a short story competition to write a short story in at most, fifty-five words. This started off a whole new genre of fiction and redefined the short story. Since then the competition has become an annual event and there have been two books produced. The "official" site for 55 Fiction is still at the New Times and it is well worth a visit. There are a lot of examples by lots of people on here, some very good and some not. They do explain things well though and you can submit your work to the annual competitions. --- The Rules: I have tried to distill the rules from the New Times rules section. Hopefully, they won't mind. A peice of 55-fiction must be a peice of fiction, not a poem, essay, a scene or an errant thought. The New Times says that the story should have: . A setting. . A character or characters. . Conflict. . Resolution. Subject to the above, the story can be about anything you want, but it should be no more than 55 words. You can write LESS than 55 words if you want. The following definitions of words apply: . If it is in the dictionary (or in common usage) it is a word. . A hyphenated word does not count as a single word unless it cannot stand as single words when the hyphen is removed. The word "re-entry" is a single word, the word "tea-stained" is not. (To confuse things, the word tee-tree is a single word to my mind). . A word contraction is a single word, so "they will" can become "they'll" and you will save a word. . Initials count as words, since they only abbreviations. Standardly accepted abbreviations however, such as NASA and MS will count as single words. . Numbers count as words... 4296 is a single word, "four thousand, two hundred and ninety-six" is seven words... Take your pick! . Use as much punctuation as you want, it doesn't alter the word count. . The title does not count towards the word count and you can have up to seven words. (Note: If you are clever, you can often use the title to add a lot to the basic story). . Although not an "official" rule, the layout of the story can often add a lot without altering the word count... Of course - The best writers in history have often broken all of the rules and somehow got away with it - So... Why not? --- My stories: Firstly, be careful if you are using this page as a writer's introduction. I am not a purist all the time and as well as complete stories I occasionally like to just write a scene - I will try and point out where I don't think I strictly adhere to the rules when it is convenient not to. Secondly though, I do always try to use exactly 55 words. I suspect that this is merely just perversity on my side though. I write 55's for a couple of reasons. I have the attention span of a gnat on speed - I like writing fiction, but I very soon get bored of all of the "padding" that most fiction requires. If I am bored of it I can only assume my readers will be as well so I make the things I write short and try and change topics frequently. The other major reason I write these is as a balance for the sheer amount of Non-Fiction I write. It helps to keep my mind on being succinct and to the point and it also takes my mind off the Non-Fiction for a while and helps my writer's block. You may be suprised at the odd format of the stories I write - Why present them as a printed page and not just a normal web page? Well, each of these is carefully crafted and 55 words looks pretty insignificant on a page alone so I thought I would spend a bit of effort making them look pretty and I hope it works. Finally; all of these stories are presented here for general enjoyment but I do maintain the copyright. If you want to quote them anywhere or reprint them please ask my permission first. I will almost certainly not mind but it is polite to ask and give me a link back.
(C)	:	Copyright Michael Lawrie, 2003. All Rights Reserved.

From:	Peter	(09:55, Mar 26, 2007)
Started a squidoo lens on Nanofiction http://www.squidoo.com/nanofiction Please have a look and leave your comments. I have borrowed the image for 55fiction from your site. Do let me know if this is ok with you. Thanks
From:	Cathy	(13:51, Apr 28, 2007)
Having heard about 55 through another blog I decided to try It and now do one every Friday as do some of my fellow bloggers.I intend to use your picture as alink to your site as I want to make a list of 55 links if you object you can find me here:- litcor.blogspot.com
From:	Ali	(23:08, May 21, 2007)
I first saw these 55-fictions on Cathy's site, and having attempted Haiku some months ago, thought I'd give this a go. Hope it's OK. Will link back to here. I can be found at aygosliblog.blogspot.com