The Art and Craft of Writing 100-Word Stories
To date, I estimate that I have written well over 1,000 100-word stories (also called drabbles) and have written several extended works strung together with 100-word chapters (see On the 100 x 100 Micro Novel). When people learn that I have written prolifically in this form, they are always curious as to how a person could write a 100-word story, let alone call 100 words a story. I wondered the same thing at first, but then I read Grant Faulkner’s Fissures, then Paul Strohm’s Sportin’ Jack, then several of the journals that publish 100-word stories, and I began to understand that writing 100-word stories was really a thing — and that they could be good.
My first few 100-word stories weren’t impressive, and that was because it took me a while to figure out the form. It was only when I began writing Kwansabas (a poetic form created by Dr. Eugene Redmond) and practicing 50-word stories that I began to condition my mind to accept what could be accomplished in so few words. It was the decision to build up to 100 words, as opposed to cut down to 100 words, that helped me to create my first published 100-word story.
The 100-word story is so malleable and shapeshifting that there are hundreds of ways to approach it and still end up with a successful story, but for any story to work, there should be both an understanding of the art and the craft of writing a story. The art part of it comes with time, as you develop your own style and begin to find the best words and arrangements of those words to tell the story the best way you can. The craft part, however, is the thing that would, in theory, be the easiest to get a handle on. It involves understanding story structure and how to use the necessary grammar and mechanics to bring that structured idea together.
I have been fortunate to write about various aspects of 100-word story writing in Writer’s Digest over the years, but over this past year, I have had the urge to put together all of my thoughts and advice on writing 100-word stories into a single place. I opted to dispense this information in exactly 100 words over the course of 100 chapters and call it One Hundred Ways: A Handbook for Writing 100-Word Stories.
While there are a handful of books on how to write 100-word stories, I have a few ideas that have not appeared anywhere beyond the courses I have taught at Hampton University over the past seventeen years. The book is divided into ten sections of ten chapters each, addressing things from where to get ideas and how to approach your writing to the importance of proper grammar and mechanics in microfiction and thoughts on publishing.
I don’t profess to be the end-all-be-all authority on writing 100-word stories, but I do feel comfortable in the knowledge I have gained from writing so many of them. To me, the 100-word story is an excellent way to understand character, setting, plot, irony, symbolism, point of view, succinctness, and how to use language correctly and effectively.
It is my hope that you will try out the craft of writing 100-word stories, and I hope that you’ll enjoy it enough to want to develop it into an art.
