The Art of the 750-Word Challenge

[MillieDynamite]

On another site, which I belong to, there is a yearly challenge called The 750-Word Challenge (Event, Project, Month). Every February, members who choose to participate write a story or stories in which the body text is exactly 750 words in length. There are certain issues with this. Such as, EM dashes with no space around count as one word, EM dashes with spaces on either side count as three words. Therefore, the only way to use long dashes is with a space between the words, but the dash connected to one of the other words.

Now I use MS-Word, and I believe it counts long dashes as connecting two words into one, but counts words like "the 18-year-old" as three separate words. Maybe not, but I use Word as my guide, and when I've reached 750 of them, I stop and see what needs to be done to make it a full story.

But the art of a short-short story is having a beginning, middle, and end. It should make sense and reach a logical conclusion. If you can make it erotic, all the better, since that website has erotic in its name. I've participated in this for several years. I have a Substack, but don't post to it often. After a year, I have a measly three followers. I'm a ghost writer, so having time for all the irons I have on free sites isn't a top priority. Substack, Medium, or Simily (simile spelled cutesy) require daily posting to grow an audience. Between writing for publication (for pay) and paid work, I don't have time for daily responsibilities beyond wife, child, and parental units.

Even so, I could write three or four 750-word (or even 1500-word) stories every day. However, I'd rather do that now and again.

Every level of story, Flash 750 to 3500 words, short story 3501 - 9999, novelette 10,000 to 19,999, novella 20,000 to 39,999, or Novel 40,00 and up, requires different writing techniques. They are written in different ways. I'm a seat-of-the-pants writer up to 10,000 words. But more often than not, I write an outline for anything over 5000 words. I've never written a story over 36,000 words for any of my pen names. But I have many stories for two different authors that are over 60,000 words.

But enough about me, tell me how you write, what do you think about short-short stories, commonly labeled flash fiction? This small black woman wants to know.

Millie

[Claire]

First, you can name that other site if you want to!

Regarding the actual topic: I never tried to write with a specific word count in mind. And I've only every written a single piece of flash fiction so far:

Party Hard

My mind doesn't naturally gravitate to writing such short stories. Especially for erotic stories, they are just too short to get me in the mood. The shortest story I ever wrote without being prompted by a contest to keep myself short is The Infinite Rape with ~1800 words. And I'm baffled by the 15 people who voted for "I came reading this story." in the attached poll. I couldn't do that with such a short story.

But I started to appreciate flash fiction more over time. When a story manages to be effective and do a lot with such few words, I find that very impressive. When I wrote Party Hard I had to really force myself out of my comfort zone. The word limit for the story was 1,000 words and most contestants got very close to that. I told myself that I didn't want to compress my usual writing style down to 1,000 words and struggle against the length limitation by stretching it to its limit, but embrace the brevity of the format. I ended up writing ~550 words and I think the story was very efficient in what it did. That turned the whole thing into a fun challenge for me.

I haven't written flash fiction since and I doubt I will ever get the same enjoyment out of it as writing and reading longer stories gives me. Finishing Record Chaser after working on it for more than a year in November last year was cathartic. I find it hard to imagine that a short story will ever make me feel that way. But I would recommend to every author to try it at least once, especially if that takes you out of your comfort zone. @Lucius produced some great flash fiction pieces for our recent tournament and I know this doesn't come to him naturally. I think his In the Cherry Orchard is probably the strongest piece of flash fiction we have on the forum. I marvel at the efficiency of the writing.

[Vela Nanashi]

For me short stories (less than 12k words) are hard to do these days, I am impressed by people who can make stories so short that work.