Friday 29 June 2007

Short Short Stories

I have previously posted about the educational benefits of Very Short Stories (6 words) and Mini Sagas (50 words) - they're fun and can be tried whatever a person's English level. The Normblog website is currently running a Short Short Story competetion - the definition of Short Short here being 250 words. Previous entries from last year's contest can be found by rummaging through the site - I think that this form of story is a good one for study, as I found that the traditional published length of story (2,500 - 5,000 words) rarely keeps the attention of students (the venerable exception being 'The Monkey's Paw'). I imagine that the reason that most professional writers have tended to write shorts on the longish side is that they were being paid by the word - I think that there's a lot of elegance to the truly short format. Anyway, check out the entries at Norm's site or submit one yourself. I found 'An Inconvenience' by a promising young talent named Jimi Fallows to be particularly compelling.

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