Friday, July 3, 2009

55 Fiction

My local, independent paper, New Times, sponsors an annual 55 fiction competition. 55 fiction is the art of crafting a story in 55 words or less. It is a terrific writing exercise, particularly in editing and brevity (more information here).

Here is a story I've been building the last few days and plan on entering:


Child’s Play

He followed as the bubble whimsically floated up, settling carelessly next to a butterfly and some flowers. Little Alan squinted at the fragile orb: imagining. A door, a window, a chimney, he developed a rainbow-glass house for the butterfly.

What opulence!

The child laughed. The bug fluttered away. The housing bubble burst.

2 comments:

Pete Abbate said...

I like it, though I think you should change the comma after "chimney" to a semicolon, if I am interpreting this right.

Ravi said...

I love it. When do they announce the winners?

PS. Y'all need to add a way to see the most recent comments across all posts.

Compared with the totality of knowledge which is continually utilized in the evolution of a dynamic civilization, the difference between the knowledge that the wisest and that which the most ignorant individual can deliberately employ is comparatively insignificant. ~Fredrich Hayek in The Constitution of Liberty