The Postcard's Promise

As Harland dug through the ruins, he found a hidden and weathered desk. On it, an old postcard displayed a faded, scenic landscape. Flipping it over, he read delicate handwritten words:

"Dear Wanderer,

May this postcard be your journey's memento, reminding you of wonders witnessed and truths sought. Let it inspire your quest for knowledge and enlightenment. With each step, the world and you transform. Embrace the magic within, letting it guide your path. Uncover the mysteries. Remember, great adventures start unexpectedly.

Safe travels,

A fellow explorer."

Harland cherished the postcard as a symbol of inspiration and continued his exploration.

From Guest Contributor J. Iner Souster

Dreams In Green

Standing here on this frigid night, I look out over a frozen landscape, and I can't help but wonder why?. There is still hope. Maybe one day, this land will come back to life, the trees will grow, the water will flow, and the air will smell fresh and clean.

I can still feel the excitement coursing through me, the sense of wonder at seeing something so beautiful. The land of ice and snow holds a strange sort of magic.

But the land is not dead. It's only sleeping, waiting for inspiration or something green to grow the days away.

From Guest Contributor J. Iner Souster

Inspiration

Beads of sweat dripped down my face as I hurried into the door of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts. People gathered at one painting, “The Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels,” by Jean Fouquet.

I pushed my way through the crowd until I reached the exquisite masterpiece. The Virgin’s voluptuous breast was exposed for her hungry child that sat naked on her lap, her hand gently around his waist. Dozens of angels surrounded them while her crown glowed, and she sat high in her throne.

I stood awestruck.

That was all the inspiration I needed to begin painting again.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Threatened Birds Nesting

You’re eating lunch on a bench in the park, close to a roped-off area where a sign says threatened birds are nesting. It’s the first nice day in a week. You’re enjoying the spring-like weather when a man you’ve never seen before steps out from behind a tree. He points a .38 special at you, shouts, “I regard Henry Ford as an inspiration,” and fires. In just hours, friends have assembled a pop-up shrine at the spot, with flowers, teddy bears, messages of love and respect. Although not me. I’m reading true crime books in order to gather survival tips.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems from Cajun Mutt Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.

The Three Brigits

Brigit, Irish Goddess of Poetry, sits at the feet of her Mother of Plenty.

She calls to her sisters, Brigit of Medicine and Brigit of Smithcraft. They watch as humans emerge on Earth.

Brigit of inspiration says to them, “Humans are evolving, so I’ve blessed them with verse. What gifts do you bestow?”

Brigit of healing says, “I share my curiosity so they explore their world and themselves.”

Brigit of the forge answers, “I share my love of craft, the shaping of earthly elements.”

Mother says, “I pray they find peace and joy in our plentiful gifts before destroying them.”

From Guest Contributor Soma Datta (@somaxdatta)

Possibly Stephen

The writer stared at the page, expecting inspiration to spring at him from the fibres of the old-style reporters’ notebook.

Words trickled...gushed...cascaded. He ripped the page out, rolled it into a tight ball and chucked. It bounced off the bin, thran as the incorporeal muse.

“What was wrong with that?” she asked, form flickering in the draught.

“It was in Latin,” he spat.

She giggled a bit. “Sorry, my mind wandered. I know, how about–?”

“Look, could you put on something less filmy. It’s distracting. Tired, not dead.”

“Tweeds okay?”

He nodded, and wrote Misery.

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid

The Art Of 100 Word Fiction

This essay appears at the end of my collection of 100-word stories, Picasso Painted Dinosaurs, currently for sale at Amazon and other online bookstores.

Presumably, you’ve just finished reading 100 examples of a format of writing known as flash fiction. Either that, or you’re the kind of person who likes to skip ahead and wade through the bibliography before reading the actual text. Whatever works for you. No judgments here. But assuming you’re among the former, you might be wondering where the heck this guy came up with the idea for writing 100-word stories.

I’m glad you asked. For something so brief, flash fiction has origins going back thousands of years, all the way to Aesop and his fables. Historical practitioners included Saadi of Shiraz, Bolesław Prus*, Anton Chekhov, O. Henry, Franz Kafka, H.P. Lovecraft, Ernest Hemingway, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, and Lydia Davis. But it has only been the past couple of decades that the genre has thrived. Outlets for publication of flash fiction, with names such as SmokeLong Quarterly, Flash Fiction Online, and Vestal Review, have proliferated in print and on the Internet, a probable reflection of our shortening attention spans.

*I have no idea who Bolesław Prus is, but the awesomeness of his name demanded his inclusion.

Broadly speaking, flash fiction is a style of narrative marked by its brevity, with stories ranging from as long as 1,000 words to as short as six. They might have an upper word limit, or they may proscribe an exact word count. Through the years, flash fiction has been gifted with many names, including sudden fiction, microfiction, micro-story, short short, postcard fiction, prosetry, and short short story.

Bear in mind, no matter how long or short, to qualify as an actual story a piece must have a beginning, middle, and end. It makes the idea of six-word fiction seem nearly impossible. However, the following story, commonly attributed to Earnest Hemingway, stretches the nanolimits of fiction:

“For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

The first two words form the hook, creating the question of what’s for sale, before immediately supplying the answer, ‘baby shoes.’ The action quickly moves to the conclusion, as we learn the tragic fate of the child meant to wear those shoes. In six simple words, we’re given all the ingredients for a complete narrative.

It seems unlikely that Hemingway actually wrote the above story, as its first recorded mention was in a 1996 play by John DeGroot about Hemingway’s life, entitled Papa. Nevertheless, it is one of the most remarkable examples of flash fiction we have today and neatly illustrates the power of the genre. Not only does it break down the necessary ingredients for a story to their most fundamental level, it does so with emotional resonance.

At A Story In 100 Words, we've found that what began as a daily writing exercise has helped us improve as writers, grow more precise and efficient in our use of language, and become much more popular with our friends. In fact, we could not recommend the endeavor more emphatically, whether you are an aspiring writer or just wish to find a new avenue for expressing your creativity.

But the question we are most often asked is why does it have to be exactly 100 words. Why not provide a word range, say, 75-150 words? That would certainly seem reasonable, especially if the aim is to inspire us to write a complete story every day. Who wants to be counting words and obsessing over the fact we exceeded our limit?

As it turns out, the word restriction is the most essential element of our daily writing exercise. Having an exact word limit will task your writing skills in a way a more liberal policy cannot. Economy becomes a virtue more essential than vocabulary or grammar. All other considerations are secondary, as the restriction will force you to discover the simplest means for relaying an idea, much like a city surveyor lays out roads in the most direct manner possible (except in the city of Louisville).

With that in mind, let’s take a look at the many ways short fiction can improve your writing:

Practice

The first advice for any aspiring writer is no secret: WRITE. If you want to be a carpenter, you need to practice using the tools. Astronauts don’t get into outer space until they’ve had thousands of flight hours. If your desire is to become a writer, you need to work at writing stories.

I often hear people express a desire to write but make excuses for why they don't have the time. EVERYONE has time to write a daily 100-word story. You can finish one in less than 15 minutes. Your first attempts may not be as god as you hoped, but it doesn’t take long before you see improvement.

Economy

Writers must often convey complex ideas in a concise manner. Nothing can be more useful in honing this skill than writing to a word count, especially a short one. With only 100 words in your arsenal, you can’t afford to waste any. After a few months, you'll be producing prose of which Hemingway would be proud.

Creativity

One of my biggest worries when I set out to write a daily 100-word story was that I'd repeat myself or run out of new ideas. Two years on, and I'm still surprising myself with the stories I come up with. It turns out, the more often you write, the more ideas you generate.

Even so, it helps to have some new sources of inspiration, especially as you are starting out. Here are some hints on how to keep things fresh*:

• Keep a notebook and jot down ideas.
• Look for inspiration in the books and articles you read, or the movies you watch.
• Ask people for prompts. For example, I wrote the story, "Black Market Tears" based on a prompt from a friend.
• Mix and match ideas. Think about someone you know and imagine her in an unusual situation. Take two prompts and combine them into one story.
• Try to write a story in a particular style, genre, or voice. I did an entire month of genre stories (Thriller, Western, Joyce) and found it particularly invigorating.
• Jot down ideas until something sticks.
• Don't let bad stories get you down. Not every story will be a triumph. You'll appreciate the good ones all the more when you struggle through some bad ones.

*See Appendix Two for more ideas on inspiration.

Voice

Writing a new story every day is a great way to experiment with voice. You can switch between first and third person. You can give second person a try. You can write from the perspective of all sorts of characters, people that you would never have imagined could help drive a story. 100 words don't amount to much, but it's just enough to get a tease of a character or style. Today you might try to mimic Hemingway, tomorrow Dostoevsky, and the day after Austen.

Accomplishment

Beyond all these technical points of writing, however, I have always believed the most important reason for writing a 100 word story every day is the sense of accomplishment. After just a few weeks, you can look back and find you've actually built up a body of work.

With any creative endeavor, the chief reward should be the feeling of elation that is achieved. This is true whether you are writing for an audience of millions or your immediate friends and family. Don't worry about ‘how good’ something is, just write. Every time you finish a 100-word story, rest assured that you are 100 words better as a writer.

The Failings of 100 words

For all of its benefits, the 100-word limit is not perfect. Sometimes, no matter how lean your prose, it's impossible to fit everything you have to say into a set number of words. I chip and chisel and pare down the sentences and find that what I'm left with doesn't express exactly what I intended.

"Ghost Story" is a good example. It could really use another sentence or two to get across the original idea, that Jackson is thoroughly uninterested in the ghost of his dead wife until he gets fired and realizes he can use it as an excuse. The perfect story should not be written with a word count in mind, but should use the exact number of words necessary to convey what you want to say.

There are plenty of other stories that feel incomplete. They introduce a character or a situation that is worthy of further exploration but leave the reader hanging. You should always remember the 100-word story is not the destination, but is part of the journey. Some of your stories will be perfect at 100 words, but others will be teasers for future stories of more depth. That is as it should be.

Unless you're writing for a specific publication, don't force yourself to make a 150 word story fit into 100 words. The 100-word exercise can help make you a better writer in all the ways mentioned above, but don't stick to it even when it doesn't make sense. As a writer, you set the rules, and you know when to break them.

Most importantly, stop making excuses and start writing. A word count, a daily goal, a schedule, they can all help motivate you. But don’t let them become obstacles. Always remember to write something every day, even if it’s just in your personal journal. The end goal of a writing exercise is to make you a better a writer, and nothing makes you a better writer than writing.