Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-32764586-20180118231753/@comment-25307213-20180119081306

As far as being posted to a wiki page on this site, I'd say no, because of the requirements this site has about plot development. A micropasta (otherwise known as microfiction and flash fiction) is generally too short for any significant plot to take place, so it's usually removed pretty quickly.

For the concept of length, yes. Flash fiction and microfiction have been around for ages. One of the shortest pieces of microfiction is, in its entirety, "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." This is often attributed to Ernest Hemmingway, but it's not substantiated enough for me to cite him as the  author with any credibility. That said, the various forms of small fiction (<1000 words) cannot even be properly dated, because it goes straight back to oral histories, and the advent of writing, itself.

Microfiction is often cited as being a hundred words or less (also sometimes called a "drabble"), while flash fiction has been cited anywhere between 500 and 1000 words.

I, personally, find flash and microfiction to be an incredible exercise in storytelling, because you need to communicate with the reader without wasting words. That kind of challenge can translate to your longer works, because you train yourself to think in terms of evocative sentences and careful word choice to stay within that word limit without losing the essence of your story. Then, when you have thousands of words to play with, you use those same techniques of word choice and sentence structure to pack a lot of information and sensory stimulation in a small space; it can make short stories linger, and long stories consume the reader entirely.

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Two of mine:

Bingo: (141 words)

It was quiet. More quiet than a bingo hall should be. The lights flickered above me, casting ghoulish shadows across the wall and tricking my mind into seeing phantoms that were not there. Bodies littered the floor, limbs akimbo in the staccato darkness, their faces contorted into permanent masks of fear and agony.

I looked toward the podium, to the crumpled body of the now-silent bingo caller. Where his face had been, only a bloodied cavity remained. The bone-debris-filled soup of his existence seeped from his ears to soak into the cheap linoleum below. It glistened black in the weird phosphorous light strobing from above.

I looked down at my hands, their familiar grey now painted a dark and gory red; they shimmered with the vital fluids of the expired octogenarius cluttering the room. I wished I could control the lust and hunger that forced me to destroy such pretty things.

But as I licked the blood from my claws, I knew I didn't mean it.

Jackpot: (120 words)

Motes of dust and smoke drifted on lazy air currents through the crimson satin-and-velvet-lined gaming parlor. It smelled like a burnt, snuffed out candle (among other things).

I picked my way cautiously through the sea of broken bodies, shotgun at the ready should anything that aught not to be moving show signs of ignoring reason.

The blood spattered throughout the parlor added a glistening sheen to the satin and velvet, and the fragments of bone looked so much like confetti that I had to smile; they knew how special today was.

I always told myself that I would get an extra special treat if I ever made a royal flush.

Well ... Hello, Jackpot!

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Further, recently a bunch of veteran writers over on Creepypasta.com published an anthology of micropastas, a fairly active subreddit called /r/shortscarystories has horror stories that usually come in under 500 words, and tickld.com frequently puts together batchs of great things that can be found on reddit, including micropasta. They have a nice little collection of disturbing tales right here, most of which are significantly less than 100 words (they're all two sentences long!)

So, at the end of this very long post, what I'm hoping you take away is not that your idea is in any way unoriginal, but that you are in very good company, and can find tons of communities of people doing exactly this, and who would no doubt be ecstatic to read your words. :)