I read this article today on NPR Fiction: “Hint Fiction Celebrates the (Extremely) Short Story”. I love this sort of challenge and remembered a #tweetstory I wrote a while back.
Tweets are a maximum of 140 characters, including spaces (unless you use that twitter software that lets you write longer ones that it condenses into a link for the reader to click to read the rest–cheating if you ask me). Now imagine writing an entire story in a tweet. Every word choice is critical. That’s a form of hint fiction.
Hint fiction, according to the article, is 25 words or less. Bingo! My #tweetstory was 24 words long and here she is (text shortcuts used to hold the character count below 140, have been spelled out in their entirety):
If older women are invisible to society, would their crimes go unsolved? Ma decided to test her theory. She was right for seven days.
Did I tell a story? Did I avoid having it sound like a first sentence or a random thought? These are the typical rookie mistakes according to the article.
So, dear readers, I challenge you to try your hand at “Hint Fiction”, either on your own blog with a link in a comment here or simply post your 25 word or less story in the comment itself.
Way cool! So many questions COULD come up from that, but at the same time, the one big one is answered, too!!
sweet