Short Short Fiction Assignment

GENRE STUDY: (Very) Short Fiction

(also called “microfiction,” “sudden Fiction,” and “Short-short Stories)

Published Examples & Exercises

“Happy Endings” by Margaret Atwood (This is an exercise involving plot.)

Write a short-short story in which you tell the same story several times but vary some element of that story (the beginnings, the endings, the main character, the setting, a key object, the narrator, etc.)

“Ghost Children of Tacoma” by Richard Brautigan (This is an exercise involving point of view)

Write a short-short story in which write about something in the narrator’s imagination (a fantasy, imaginative play, make-believe) as if it were true. Describe the imaginary events with precise (but invented) details. (In Brautigan’s story the narrator uses very precise numbers to describe how many planes, tanks, ships, etc. he has destroyed during his childhood war games.) You could narrate the story from the point of view of someone looking back at the childhood games (though this person still narrates with a childishly naïve belief in the fantasy) or from the child’s point of view.

“Waiting” by Peggy McNally and “The Book of the Grotesque” by Sherwood Anderson (This is an exercise involving character.)

Write a short-short story that focuses on revealing the inner life of a character.

• You could follow “Waiting” by using a third person narrator and a single sentence to write about a day-in-the-life of a person (or a description of the person’s activities and thoughts) that reveals some hidden truth about the character.
• You could follow “The Book of the Grotesque” by exaggerating the characteristics, activities, and thoughts of a character so as to clearly reveal some truth about the character (and other people too). Be careful to write a grotesque (an exaggerated character that reveals a truth) as opposed to a stereotype (a simplified character in which common assumptions replace observation and truth).
• Or you could combine the two: create a “grotesque” in one sentence.

“I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone” by Richard Brautigan (This is an exercise involving associative description.)

Write a short-short story in which you describe a person, place, or thing through a comparison with something that (on the surface) is quite different from that person, place, or thing; although, under the surface the comparison conveys a truth.

“Murder in the Dark” by Margaret Atwood

Write a short-short story in which you tell a story about playing a game. Then reflect on the meaning of the game. What does it reveal about competition or about telling stories or about being a friend…or about anything else?

Type up, revise, and proofread one story to turn in by the end of class on Friday. Type up excerpts from the other exercises to show that you have understood and have completed the assignments. Turn these in by the end of class on Friday.
If you have time do the extra credit.

Extra Credit:

“Letter to a Funeral Parlor” by Lydia Davis

Write a story in the form of letter. The letter should focus on your objection to someone’s use of a word or phrase.