# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Success is the sum of small efforts,repeated day in and day out.

# data[].attributes.body
Writing in a class exists in the larger class ecosystem, and for me, short writing was a natural fit with other features of my course design:

microassignments: lots of small, low-stakes assignments; more about microassignments

ungrading: students kept track of their work for their final grade; more about all-feedback-no-grades

blogging: students shared all their writing in our class blog network; more about blog networks

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
book covers of the 3 One-Sentence Stories anthologies

# data[].attributes.body
Valerie Dumond's delightful book series, One-Sentence Stories: An Anthology of Stories Told in a Single Sentence, shows how it's possible write sentences that are 100 or 200 or 300 words long, or even longer. Such long sentences are a perfect opportunity for collaborative writing. Just start with a kernel word or phrase in a shared space (like a Google Doc), and let people add and add and add until it feels done.

# data[].attributes.body
I write books of 100-word "tiny tales" based on traditional fables, folktales, and legends. The books are CC-licensed OER (open educational resources) free to download, remix, and reuse. There are 10 tiny tale books available at 100Words.LauraGibbs.net, with free audiobooks too.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Logo of Maskwacis Cultural College from Wikipedia

# data[].attributes.body
I am excited and honored to be presenting at Manisha Khetarpal's microlearning continuing education project for Maskwacis Cultural College on Thursday, January 19 2023, Noon-1PM Mountain Time.
To view as a presentation, click here to switch to Slide view (or, on your phone, just expand a post to full-screen view).
To register for the event, use this registration form.

And please feel free to add comments or ask questions here at the padlet before, during, and after the event. Each post/slide has its own comment box. You can also contact me by email laurakgibbs@gmail.com or find me at Twitter @OnlineCrsLady (Online Course Lady). The conversation can go on beyond the scheduled workshop: I hope it will! :-)

# data[].attributes.headline
Power of Creative Constraints in Tiny Writing

# data[].attributes.subject
Power of Creative Constraints in Tiny Writing

# data[].attributes.body
This is the current draft of an article that I just finished writing with a colleague in Germany: The Power of Creative Constraints in Tiny Writing, and it will be appearing in this online magazine for teachers: MindBrainEd Think Tanks. It's the first of a two-part series, so I will add the second part to this padlet when that comes out too!
The archive of MindBrainEd is a great resource for teachers in all subjects, and especially language teachers. (I wrote an article for their November issue about alternative assessment: Ungrading: It's Easier Than You Think!)

# data[].attributes.body
Here's a collaborative sentence doodle from the Digital Pedagogy Lab in 2021, starting with the phrase "the spaceship landed." You can see more sentence-doodles in Tiny Tales from the Digital Pedagogy Lab, including more doodles from this same prompt.
======
The Spaceship Landed

The spaceship sat alone, rusting, half-submerged in a hill that rose up like a grassy bubble in the boundless prairie, sitting there as it had been sitting for millennia, its once shiny exterior emblazoned with the symbols of some other civilization now covered over with the green life of this planet, but the tiny laser beacon kept pulsing, pulsing until finally a flock of Canada geese landed in a wide circle around it, honking absently yet intentionally, using a language unknown to earthling birds but very familiar to the alien birds they knew were inside the ship, “Sorry we’re late!”

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
book cover of Meaningful Writing Project

# data[].attributes.body
For me, the purpose of flash writing and microfiction was to create MEANINGFUL WRITING projects for students, and my students and I participated in this wonderful multi-campus study: The Meaningful Writing Project by Michele Eodice, Anne Ellen Geller, and Neal Lerner. The only way, IMO, to prepare for the coming onslaught of robo-writing-bots is to create these meaningful writing experiences in which students will want to invest their time and their energy both in the writing and in the revision.

# data[].attributes.body
This is a Ndau story from Mozambique; more about the story. Does this rabbit remind you of Bugs Bunny? He should! The trickster rabbit of Africa storytellers gave us the American Brer Rabbit, and his cartoon cousin, Bugs Bunny, too.
======
The Rabbit, the Baboon, and the Peanuts

Rabbit and Baboon raided a peanut-garden.

As they feasted, Rabbit said, “Let’s play a game with our fingers!”

“No,” said Baboon. “I’m using my fingers to eat.”

“With our mouths!”

“No, I’m using my mouth.”

“With our eyes!”

“No, I’m using my eyes.”

“With our tails!”

“Okay,” Baboon agreed, “but you’ll have to show me how to play this game.”

“It’s easy,” said Rabbit as he grabbed Baboon’s tail and tied it to a stake in the ground. Then Rabbit shouted, “Come, people! Come, dogs! Baboon’s stealing your peanuts!”

While the people and dogs attacked Baboon, Rabbit ran away, laughing.

# data[].attributes.headline
A Tiny Tale from Cree storyteller Coming-Day

# data[].attributes.subject
A Tiny Tale from Cree storyteller Coming-Day

# data[].attributes.body
In honor of and with gratitude for the wonderful trickster stories about Wisahketchahk told by Cree storytellers, I did this 100-word story to share in this presentation. You can read the original story I started from as told in Cree by Coming-Day plus an English translation at Internet Archive. More details and information at this blog post: Wisahketchahk.
======
Wisahketchahk and the Shut-Eye Dancers
Wisahketchahk was hungry.  Then he saw geese... ducks... food!
So Wisahketchahk began to sing.
"What's that song?" asked the birds.
"It's the Shut-Eye-Dance song," replied Wisahketchahk.
"Please teach us this dance!" begged the foolish birds.
Wisahketchahk smiled. He built a lodge and invited them in.
"Shut your eyes while I'm singing," he said, and the birds shut their eyes.
Wisahketchahk sang. The birds danced.
One by one Wisahketchahk strangled the birds.
But Helldiver opened his eyes... and saw.
"Wisahketchahk's killing us!" he squawked, running away with the other bird survivors.
Wisahketchahk just laughed. "Run! I've got plenty of food now!"

# data[].attributes.body
The 6-word memoir has inspired so much great writing; just Google 6-word memoir and you will get a superabundance of results. And the biggest 6-word memoir project going is the one at Smith Magazine, which you can learn about in this NPR interview: Can You Tell Your Life Story In Exactly Six Words?

# data[].attributes.body
There are lots of advantages to microwriting (100 words and under) and flash writing (under 1000 words):

For readers: read more items, engage with details, provide focused feedback
For writers: write more confidently, revise repeatedly, be proud of the final product
For teachers: read more items, provide more feedback, promote more sharing

(For the person who asked about wordy phrases to eliminate, I can guarantee that these word limits will give both novice and experienced writers a new appreciation for making every word count, both literally and metaphorically speaking!)

# data[].attributes.body
My favorite book from the SixWordMemoirs project is Six Words Fresh Off the Boat: Stories of Immigration, Identity, and Coming to America.
Here's a video that tells about the book and features many stories, together with their authors. Just a few of the stories featured in the video:

Even Siri does not understand me.

What IS that in your lunchbox?

NO, I DO NOT SPEAK Indian.

I can't spell my grandmother's name.

Born in Tule Lake. Google it.

I only speak Spanish on weekends.

.... and yes, you will find celebrities interspersed here, along with everyday people you have never heard of. They all have stories!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Six Words Fresh Off the Boat: Stories of Coming to America

# data[].attributes.body
I'm always glad to brainstorm about tiny writing and how to incorporate it into a class or a community project. You can find me at Twitter, @OnlineCrsLady, or email me at laurakgibbs@gmail.com.
Happy Writing!

# data[].attributes.body
I cannot say enough good things about Doug Weller's Six Word Wonder Workbook: Write Your Own Six Word Stories, Poems, Memoirs, and Jokes.
And Doug Weller practies what he preaches; he's published several books of his own 6-word stories; find out more at his website: DougWeller.net.

# data[].attributes.body
After I started writing microfiction in Spring 2020, my students jumped right in and wanted to experiment with short writing too, and they published anthologies of their "tiny tales" in Fall 2020 and in Spring 2021. They're free ebooks! (We used Pressbooks to publish the books.)

# data[].attributes.body
'Hint Fiction' Celebrates The (Extremely) Short Story at NPR. This is an interview with Robert Swartwood, author of the book Hint Fiction: Stories in 25 Words or Fewer.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
‘Hint Fiction’ Celebrates The (Extremely) Short Story

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Can you tell a story in 25 words or fewer? Inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s six-word novel — “For sale: baby shoes, never worn” — Robert Swartwood has compiled a new anthology featuring bite-sized works of fiction.

# data[].attributes.body
This is a Prezi which contains 60 different 25-word stories, and in that dizzying Prezi way, one story leads to another and to another. Here's one story:
The Cat and the Dog
The cat cried and cried for days.
The dog was silent, as usual.
Things had gone the dog 's way again, and the cat knew it.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Nathaniel Mellor's story at the FiftyWordStories.com website

# data[].attributes.body
This is a story from the FiftyWordStories.com website; the author is Nathaniel Mellor.

A Second Death
Each of us dies twice, they say.
Once when you draw your last breath, once when your name is spoken for the last time.
Ever since I heard that, I walk through graveyards just to read the names.
One day, their name will never be spoken again.
But not today.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
screenshot of @MicroFlashFic Twitter account

# data[].attributes.body
Jesse Stanchak publishes new stories every day at @MicroFlashFic, and from those hundreds of stories, he's also published an anthology of his favorites: The Tyranny of Sand and Other Tiny Stories.

# data[].attributes.body
This is the story that gives the book its title: The Tyranny of Sand. In terms of words, it's just 52 words... but the key at Twitter is characters: 276 characters, just under the Twitter limit of 280 characters.
======
The man rides the horse across the high desert.
The horse thinks of water, and hay, and apples.
The man thinks of whiskey, and the letter in his pouch, and the tyranny of sand.
The desert thinks only of conquest, already spreading a little faster than the horse can run each day.

# data[].attributes.body
2-sentence horror stories are not just a genre of microfiction... they are also a TV series that has been running on Netflix since 2019. If you Google 2-sentence horror stories, you will find lots of collections to browse online.

# data[].attributes.body
This is a 2-sentence horror story by one of my students. What a genius use of first-person style! The word count happens to be 57... but what counts here are the sentences and the dramatic twist provided by the second sentence.
======
Shade of Red
I understand the makeup artist doesn't know what my personal preferences are, and I don't mean to be obnoxious, but I can't help my exasperation with the shade of red she's chosen.
Although, I guess I should cut her some slack, given that it's probably dificult to make lipstick look vibrant when you're putting it ona corpse.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
screenshot of search results for Cree tales at the Internet Archive

# data[].attributes.body
When you work on re-telling traditional stories, there is never a shortage of stories to tell! I highly recommend using the Internet Archive, Archive.org: it's a complete library online! They have millions of books available for borrowing one hour at a time. Just create a free account, and you can browse and read all kinds of books, including thousands and thousands of books of folktales. I blog about the Internet Archive every day at this blog: Laura's Bookshelf.
For a search example, I looked for Cree Tales. There were a lot of results!
My recent focus has been African and African Diaspora stories, and I currently host a Twitter-based book club where we read children's books based on African folktales at the Internet Archive: Anansi Book Club.

# data[].attributes.body
Revising 100-word stories feels so different from revising a longer piece of writing! This PDF describes my revision process.
For the person who asked about improving your writing while writing on your own without a teacher, short writing is a great solution! The most important part of writing is the revising, and the revision process for short fiction is, in my experience, more fun and more productive than revising longer work.

# data[].attributes.body
My own background is in fables and proverbs, traditional verbal arts in which brevity is already highly prized. I'll say more about literary 100-word stories next, but before I do that I wanted to recommend a great book about orality and how different it is from literature: Orality and Literacy by Walter Ong, available to read online at the Internet Archive.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Susan Parks' switchboard in the Telephone Museum of New Mexico

# data[].attributes.body
Yes, of course there can be non-fiction microwriting! In a workshop last summer, several participants wrote historical stories, and one participant, Brandon Morgan, (a historian) wrote a series of 100-word history vignettes inspired by his research. One of his stories goes with an object in the Telephone Museum of New Mexico:

Susan Parks, Telephone Operator
“Please don’t cry, Gwen,” she implored silently as her baby squirmed in her arms. From outside in the street, she heard soldiers yelling to each other. Carefully, quietly, she approached the window and peeked through the gap between the curtain and the pane.
In her shock, she stifled a scream. “That has to be him.”
Acting mechanically, she secured Gwen under the bed, lit a match, and connected the switchboard to Fort Bliss. Out loud this time: “Pancho Villa is attacking Columbus, the town is in flames!”
Bullets shattered the window, narrowly missing her as she ducked.

Gwen cried inconsolably.

# data[].attributes.body
To explore the world of "flash fiction" and longer forms of short writing (usually under 1000 words), the Rose Metal Field Guides are super-useful: Flash Fiction, Prose Poetry, and Flash Nonfiction. I would especially recommend the flash nonfiction book for great ideas about integrating short writing into all kinds of courses, including STEM courses!

# data[].attributes.body
The 100WordStory.org project is full of stories to enjoy and learn from! You can also follow them at Twitter. One of the co-founders of this project is Grant Faulkner, whom you may know as the director of NaNoWriMo (National Novel-Writing Month).

# data[].attributes.body
This story by Courtney Watson comes from the Nothing Short of 100 book by the 100-Word-Story project.
======
HARD TIME
by Courtney Watson
Joe ordered his first kit from a hobby magazine sent to his cell mate. The house was an antebellum plantation with a blue-papered bathroom and white columns. It had staircases and a library full of tiny books with real pages. The house was populated by little doll people, also ordered from the back pages, who would never, ever in their little doll lives rob the doll bank, armed with a tiny doll gun, shoot two of the doll tellers, and be sent to doll prison. It just wouldn't happen. Not when they had a place like this to call home.

# data[].attributes.body
And I'm so excited to say that the much-anticipated book by Grant Faulkner, The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story has just been published! The print version is still pre-order, but the Kindle version IS available NOW at Amazon. It was just released on January 9!
(For the person in the audience who asked about Freytag, this is the book you want to read; Faulkner has a lot to say about literary form and how they take shape in microfiction... and about thinking-beyond-Freytag; think outside the pyramid!)

# data[].attributes.body
Someone asked about why 100 words... and of course there is no special reason! They do fit nicely on a page or on a cellphone screen, and they take less than a minute to read out loud, but there's nothing sacred about 100. There is a beautiful book of 99 99-word stories by Trayle Kulshan, for example: Revolutions. She had her own purely personal reasons for choosing 99.

# data[].attributes.body
Trayle Kulshan was an aid worker in the Congo, which is how she came to write this 99-word story:
The Old Man
It made no difference to the old man what white men called the jungle-Congo or Zaire; he said it was Katanga. He never really learned the language of boss Leopold, except to haggle about the price of river fish. He cast his lines and sometimes broke them fighting bottom feeders or mbenga tigerfish.
Even he could not recall when the savagery began. The rebels pushed out from every side of poisoned lakes, creeping up escarpments like crocodiles who'd been taught to climb, feeding boys to the volcanoes. All the old man knew was that the violence never ended.

# data[].attributes.body
Ran Walker is probably my favorite microfictionist. He is a master of 50-word stories and also of 100-word stories, and he has now written several 100x100 novellas. My favorite is the speculative fiction novella, A Burst of Gray.

# data[].attributes.body
I've set up a Google Form so that you can let me know if there is more I can do here: additional presentations, something more like an actual writing workshop? I'm glad to connect and share, so let me know what I can do! Link to Google Form.