Bite-Sized Story: Negotiating Time

Telling a story in 100 words is hard. No, seriously.

I don’t write a lot of short fiction. I write some, but I have a terrible time keeping to short-story word limits. When I get excited about an idea, I want to explore it, and particularly the characters involved. Who are they, why are they here, how do they feel about all this? Let’s see them interact! Let’s give them a voice in dialogue! Let’s see how - wait, oh no, we’re already 200 words over the maximum wordcount and we haven’t even gotten to the action yet.

Needless to say, when a few of my writer friends suggested we all try drabbles (100-word stories), I figured I’d sit this one out - if I couldn’t stick a 3500 word limit, 100 was out of the question. But then an idea started to sprout as I was chopping vegetables for dinner, and it stuck around and settled in through washing the dishes, and then I found myself sitting down to take a crack at it after all (fun fact: “popped into my head while I was minding my own business doing something else” is how at least 50% of my stories originate).

Once I sat down it was actually kind of like a puzzle. How much can you pack into a hundred words? How can you phrase things for maximum effect and minimum wordcount? What words can you choose that carry connotations of the effect you want, without requiring other words to explain?

The result was Negotiating Time, which was published in sci-fi drabble magazine Martian earlier this month. Martian actually updates with new 100-word stories twice a week, and they’re always fun to read. Some are funny, some are serious, many impress me with what they manage to pack into 100 words (this one in particular is my favorite).

So now that you’ve read a 300-word blog post about writing a 100-word story, go ahead and check it out!