Microfiction: A Story is a Story

[radfrac_archive]

I have something here in my hand, she said.
What is it? Shouted the children, though we all knew.
It's a story, she said.
About a girl? Shouted one child. About a boy? Shouted another.
Yes, about a girl and a boy, she said.
Were they brother and sister?
Yes, and they were twins. They looked exactly alike. And they had a beautiful blue boat.
Did the boat sink?
It did, she affirmed.
Did they die? I cried out in an ecstasy of catastrophism. I had seen a picture of a shipwreck, bodies green and beautiful wrack upon the waves.
No, they didn't die, she said. They sank very deep down into the sea, and there they met a mermaid who taught them to breathe underwater. But I had stopped listening out of embarrassment, since I was the only one who had not known that for a story to be a story, it must go on.

Comments

[kainhighwind-dr.livejournal.com]

I always wish I had something more articulate to say than "I like this" when I'm moved by something. Trite, but true. I read and reread the last sentence a few times in particular just to experience it.

[radiantfracture]

Cheers! Your liking is delight enough for me.

I was making this up in the shower & when I got to the last line I was so tickled with the way it worked that I got out immediately and wrote it down, wet-haired and -handed. Probably why I caught a cold.

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[seaopaque.livejournal.com]

Writing often leads to pneumonia. That's why so many writers die.

I am in a similar boat to kainhighwind_dr in that I want to say something helpful or useful or insightful but I'm just like, "Cool, dude. Like, where do your ideas come from?"

I am curious, though, if you could explain the genesis for the project? The 1k project. (by "explain" I mean "remind me")

[radiantfracture]

I think "genesis" implies a more coherent evolution than I can recount, with certain days or epochs set aside for the origin of adverbs and so on. I have this vague idea that I will slowly get better at writing long things by writing short things and then longer short things and then sticking the various short things together. Very short things are good because I don't have time to panic.

Here's the origin story, such as it is: http://radiantfracture.livejournal.com/38626.html

I've just saved a test OpenOffice document of exactly two hundred words, and it is apparently 12k, so the whole premise is outmoded.

Cheers for asking. I haven't any adventures to post so I have to revert to fictions.

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[seaopaque.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[radiantfracture]

Now you think I am foolish.

[seaopaque.livejournal.com]

If I thought you foolish, it was long before now.

[radiantfracture]

Always already too late.

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[seaopaque.livejournal.com]

Back to being serious: if I were to make a list of "THE FOOLISH," your name would appear late, very late. And only if I was told I had to put everyone I knew on the list. (I imagine this being a task one is given upon making the journey from this world to the next. "Fill out this form. Yes, foolish. A list. You must include everyone. It doesn't matter, put them down. Everyone. Most foolish at the top, least foolish at the bottom. The pen? Oh, well, figure it out, it's the only one we've got. Here's a pin; use blood.")

[radiantfracture]

Now that is a really excellent miniature.

In a kind of ludic Kafka mode. Some sort of wonderful parable of constraint.

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[kainhighwind-dr.livejournal.com]

As a possibly interesting (or just plain tedious) aside: you'll have a heck of a time making a 1k document in programs like Word (and its kin). At least 8k is applied in Word, for example, for formatting and basic file setup by default, even in a blank document (and this was more than a decade ago; probably has a higher minimum now). NotePad, TextEdit and other basic text programs that don't use formatting only count the content, I think.

As for the exercise, excellent idea. Consistent, short bursts of practice seems to work well for me too; certainly, in the absence of practicing at all, but also as a way of overcoming reticence or pressure to produce something big and grand (which I always hope will come later).

[radiantfracture]

Oh, good point. Let me save it as a txt.

Hmm, still 4k even in Notepad. But then I'd noticed Notepad starting to save things I didn't actually want it to save.

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