Disturbing, delightful and very, very short: Fiction in 25 words or fewer

I love these snippets from Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer, that were published in the New Yorker. An anthology, edited by Robert Swartwood, it includes an eerie piece by my friend and fellow Minneapolitan Jeremy Zoss, called "Houston, We Have a Problem":

I'm sorry, but there's not enough air in here for everyone. I'll tell them you were a hero.

Perfect reading for those winter evenings where you just want to take in a sentence, and then stare out the window for 20 minutes digesting it.

Image of something else disturbing and short: Some rights reserved by Alyssa L. Miller

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

Maggie goes places and talks to people. Find out where she'll be speaking next.

MORE: Book

More at Boing Boing

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Hackers prepare for first "national holiday" in their honor

moosehunter

1:

The Building is coming down! she screamed. I looked up to see the dust billowing against the blue sky.

2:

Under a tree in battery park, A candle burns for the falling man.
Anonymous

I believe there was a book done of 6-word ones, too. That Hemmingway one already mentioned being one of them.
retchdog

“Image of something else disturbing and short: Some rights reserved by Alyssa L. Miller”

Indeed, Creative Commons is disturbing and delightful to some and some others.
jere7my

Disturbing, delightful and very, very short

That’s what she said!
hadlock

I can’t wait to read the response to “Boing Boing Hacked” – I’m surprised you didn’t have something ready when you got the site back up and running.
g0d5m15t4k3

Yay! My Creative Writing class (hilariously at Community College) introduced me to MicroFiction. This was our “text book” http://www.amazon.com/Micro-Fiction-Anthology-Really-Stories/dp/0393314324

I really enjoyed it and I think it makes sense in our time of attention spans of less than 5 minutes.
Anonymous

25 words it way too much for a good story, try writing a story in 4 words:

“hallo, world”
“hallo, dave”
jeremydbrooks

Hey, I’m in that book!
benjymous

In a similar vein, Very Short Story on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/#!/VeryShortStory
shutz

I’ve had a blog for over a year where I post 50-word stories. I used to do so every day, for a long while, but couldn’t keep it up due to my actual job completely squashing my inspiration.

All my stories are exactly 50 words (according to WordPress’s word counter, anyway.)

Most stories are in an SF, Fantasy or Horror theme. Genre conventions are great when you have a word limit: you don’t have to describe a time machine, an elf or a zombie, you just use the word and move along.

50wordstories.ca
Anonymous

Perhaps the most famous, and shortest fiction was by Hemmingway:

“For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.”
shrocket

A) Thank you for your correct use of the word “fewer” in the headline; that word seems to be dying, which is quite sad.

B) Anyone interested in hint fiction should check out Novels in Three Lines by Felix Feneon, a fin de siÃ¨cle, French anarchist who not only wrote thousands of true short novels for a newspaper in 1906, but was also the first person to publish James Joyce in France.
LightningRose

One of my favorite classics:

“Hey everybody! Watch this!”
Cynical

A Softer World is excellent, but a better analogue might be onesentence.org
Anonymous

“Perfect reading for those winter evenings where you just want to take in a sentence, and then stare out the window for 20 minutes digesting it.”

It may be my American attention span, but I don’t think I can imagine ever spending 20 minutes looking as a desolate winter landscape pondering a sentence – no matter how well written.
aolson

From the New Yorker article:

â€œThere had been rumors from the North for months. None of us believed it, until one night we started to kill our children too.”

Yipe! That’s chilling.
- fxq
  
  Yeah, that one got me too… and inspired me to parody:
  
  Cower’d By fxq
  
  There had been rumors from DC for months. None of us believed it, until one night we decided to vote Tea Party too.
  - Anonymous
    
    Good thing the professor didn’t grade on grammar: “Who’s” vs. “Whose.”
drtwist

a softer world does this, only in comic form
Anonymous

A shot rang out. Ben stared at the gun in his hand – unfired. Then he noticed the crimson stain spreading across his shirt. Damn!
Anonymous

Old joke/story:
A professor tasked his class to write the shortest story they could that included:
1) Religion
2) Sex
3) Mystery

The winning entry was:
“My God, I’m pregnant. I wonder who’s it is?”