{"id":426,"date":"2002-05-08T10:04:01","date_gmt":"2002-05-08T17:04:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2002\/05\/08\/426.html"},"modified":"2002-05-08T10:04:01","modified_gmt":"2002-05-08T17:04:01","slug":"shortshort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2002\/05\/08\/shortshort\/","title":{"rendered":"Short-short"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When I was at Clarion West, far back in the ancient mythical past, at one point we had one of those typical \"what is<\/em> a story, anyway?\" debates. (In weeks 2-3 there were a fair number of critiques that started out \"This isn't a story.\" Some of them came from the teachers. Some were aimed at me, so I may've taken it a bit personally.) One of the things I noted during this debate is that the short-short is a valid story form, and that it's hard but not impossible to make an emotional impact in 500 words.<\/p>\n

I don't think anyone else agreed with me, though. And to be fair, I have to admit that my primary example at the time was 100 Great Science Fiction Short-Short Stories,<\/cite> which in retrospect may not have been the best choice; there are quite a few joke stories in that anthology, with cute little punch lines at the end. More generally, a lot of the \"great\" short-shorts in SF are basically ideas with punch lines; clever, but not rich or deep or moving.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, I maintain that it is possible to be rich or deep or moving in under 1000 words (the usual definition of a short-short), and even in under 500 words (one of the definitions of \"flash fiction\"). There are plenty of examples: there's a bunch of good stuff in the Sudden Fiction<\/cite> anthologies, for instance.<\/p>\n

At any rate, it seems to me that the short-short has been in full flower lately in online magazines. Among other things:<\/p>\n