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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.

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book cover of Meaningful Writing Project

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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.

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Success is the sum of small efforts,repeated day in and day out.

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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

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thank you for your feedback on a corkboard

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I've created a space in the GOOGLE DOC for your closing thoughts and feedback. Please let me know if about any useful takeaway(s), along with any other feedback. Thank you! :-)

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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!

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book covers of the 3 One-Sentence Stories anthologies

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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.

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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.

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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.

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This Padlet is a presentation for CSU-MB faculty, November 9 2022. To view as a presentation, switch to Slide view (or, on your phone, just expand a post to full-screen view).

Please feel free to add comments or ask questions; each post/slide has its own comment box, and we also have a Google Doc for discussion. Plus, remember: the conversation can go on beyond the scheduled workshop: I hope it will! :-)

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Best and Worst of the Class Writing Experience for Your Students and You

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Best and Worst of the Class Writing Experience for Your Students and You

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Like I said: we've got a GOOGLE DOC... so take a few minutes to jump in there and anonymously or typing your name (either is good) share your thoughts about what is best and worst of the writing experience for your students right now... solutions to share? problems you're trying to solve?

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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.
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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!”

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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.
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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.

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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

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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).

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For years, my students wrote "Storybook" projects featuring 2 or 3 or 4 stories, each story being 500-1000 words long. You can see a gallery of hundreds of their projects here: eStorybook Central. I also did a presentation on their projects here: Student Projects #BeyondLMS.

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And here's a story from Doug Weller. For hundreds of 6-word stories, see this other presentation: 6-Word Stories.
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Pregnancy test: Positive. Boyfriend test: Negative...

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This story by Courtney Watson comes from the Nothing Short of 100 book by the 100-Word-Story project.
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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.

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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.)

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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?

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A popular name for 100-word stories is "drabbles," and if you search Amazon.com, you will find dozens of drabble books. (I recommend using a search engine to filter out books by Margaret Drabble; for example, a Google search.)

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This is a 6-word story by a student writing in Fall 2020, the first year of the pandemic. Notice how the title provides a more specific clue to the meaning of the story.
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Pandemic December. Newly empty chairs haunt Christmas dinner.

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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!

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Six Words Fresh Off the Boat: Stories of Coming to America

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Use the GOOGLE DOC to try some 6-word writing. I've set up some different categories there you might want to try:
6-Word Memoir
6-Word Diary
6-Word Pedagogy

6-Word Fandom Story (a story inspired by a fandom like Marvel, Star Wars, GoT, LotR, etc.)
6-Word Caption
6-Word ANYTHING

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'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.

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‘Hint Fiction’ Celebrates The (Extremely) Short Story

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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.

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This 25-word story comes from Swartwood's Hint Fiction; the author is Will Panzo. Notice that it has an enormous title, but still does not name the subject. The reader has work to do! As a general rule, the shorter the story, the more work the reader has to do... which is part of the pleasure of tiny stories.
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THE MAN OF TOMORROW OR MAYBE YOU'VE HEARD THIS ONE BEFORE, BUT YOU'VE NEVER HEARD IT LIKE THIS
Dying planet. A boy, a rocket, a last hope. Kansas cornfield crash landing. Ma finds it sleeping in the crater. Pa fetches the shotgun.

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screenshot of @MicroFlashFic Twitter account

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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.

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This is the story that gives the book its title: The Tyranny of Sand.
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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.

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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.

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This is a 2-sentence horror story by one of my students. What a genius use of first-person style!
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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.

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Ran Walker writes many kinds of microfiction, and one of my favorites among his many books is this collection of 50 words stories: The Strange Museum.

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From Ran Walker's Strange Museum — it also happens to be an example of 2-sentence horror.
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THE SCARECROW
Jerry fought the peer pressure from his friends to pelt the old scarecrow with miniature pumpkins they had stolen from Old Man Granger's farmer's market. That was why when Halloween night finally arrived and the battered scarecrow stepped down from its perch, Jerry was the only one who was spared.

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More about 6-word memoirs on an upcoming slide, but I wanted to share this 6-word memoir pandemic project about students, parents, and teachers: A Terrible, Horrible, No Good Year: Hundreds of Stories on the Pandemic (99 cent Kindle)

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cat at computer: look for patterns in the feedback

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Now it's time to see how quick and easy it is to provide very specific feedback on 100-word stories. I've pasted some stories into the GOOGLE DOC for you to try.
[image credit: Feedback Cats!]

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In the GOOGLE DOC I've set up some kernel phrases to start sentence-doodling with. Sentence-doodling works best asynch, in my opinion, but people can edit at the same time too! Once a sentence gets long, you can actually write at the same time that someone else is, but for getting started, it's best to work on your own. Instead of creative writing kernels, I've used both fiction and non-fiction prompts to get the sentences going!