Limiting the number of words you have to work with can be a great exercise. It forces you to make every last word count, and to choose your words with the greatest of care. It makes you pare out absolutely everything that’s inessential, so all that’s left is the barest essential of story. In Noctuary, author Thomas Ligotti introduces us to the perfect two-sentence story–and I have to admit, it’s chilling.
This morning I stumbled on a site called 55 Words:
All the stories have 55 words. I tried different lengths but settled on 55 because (for me) this was short enough to be tricky but long enough to tell a story.
Today, write a 55 word story on any topic (if you have trouble coming up with one, look through the rest of this blog for an idea). If you like how it comes out, submit it to the site as a guest story.
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