Tall And True Short Reads

Three Minute Microfiction

Episode 16 (10 March 2021)

By its definition, the key to good microfiction is brevity. There is no time for plot and character development; every word must count. The writer plunges the reader into the story and wrenches them back out, leaving it to the reader’s imagination to reflect upon what they have read.

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Three Minute Microfiction

Show Notes

Season One: Episode 16 (10 March 2021)

Three Minute Microfiction features three microfiction pieces from the Tall And True writers’ website, written and narrated by Robert Fairhead.

Read the microfiction on Tall And True:

1. There’s No Need To Wake Up – https://www.tallandtrue.com.au/microfiction/no-need-to-wake-up

2. And I didn’t even get convicted – https://www.tallandtrue.com.au/microfiction/and-i-didn-t-even-get-convicted

3. We Need to Talk – https://www.tallandtrue.com.au/microfiction/we-need-to-talk

Podcast website: https://www.tallandtrueshortreads.com

Support the podcast: supporter.acast.com/tall-and-true-short-reads

Buy Robert’s short story collections online:

Story Insight

I discovered the microfiction genre when reviewing a collection for Writing NSW, Loopholes by Susan McCreery.

Wiktionary.org defines microfiction as “Fiction that has a significantly shorter than average length.” Synonyms include drabble, flash fiction, flashfic, short-short story, sudden fiction and even twitterature.

By its definition, brevity is the key to good microfiction. There is no time for plot and character development; every word must count. The writer plunges the reader into the story and wrenches them back out, leaving it to the reader’s imagination to reflect upon what they have read, what lead to the situation, and how it might resolve itself.

Microfiction will not be to every reader’s taste. Some may consider it a modern malaise, where our pace of life has become too fast to enjoy a leisurely read. Or Twitteresque, where US Presidential pronouncements are reduced to 280-character tweets.

And yet, microfiction is not as recent a form as some might imagine. Ernest Hemingway is said to have written a famous piece in response to a challenge to write a six-word novel: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

I wrote these three microfiction pieces at different times in my life. There Is No Need Wake Up was written for a local radio competition in 2000. The brief was to include the tagline, “There is no need to wake up”. As luck would have it, I have occasionally dreamed my footy team has won games that, in reality, they lost.

And I Didn’t Even Get Convicted was also written for a local radio competition in 2014. The story had to be 200 words or less and to end with the line, “And I didn’t even get convicted”. I received a nice thank you for my entry. But I didn’t even get selected as a winner.

The final short piece, We Need To Talk, was written for a competition run by Meanjin Quarterly to celebrate the introduction of 280-character Twitter in 2017. The rules were simple: tweet a 280-character story and include the hashtag #meanjin280. I didn’t win the competition. But I repurposed the piece for another microfiction competition run by the Australian Writers’ Centre in 2019, as We Need to Talk in 29 Words. And this was published on their blog.

I hope you enjoyed this dabble with microfiction. You can read these pieces and all my short stories, blog posts and other writing at TallAndTrue.com.

Thank you for listening. The next episode of Tall And True Short Reads will be in your podcast feed shortly. In the meantime, please check your feed for earlier episodes. And subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it via your favourite listening app.

And don’t forget to tell your family and friends about Tall And True Short Reads and the Tall And True writers’ website.

Podcast Theme and Sound Effects

Royalty-free music from Pixabay.com: Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 15 in D major, Op. 28 ‘Pastorale’ – IV. Rondo. Allegro ma non-Troppo, performed by Karine Gilanyan.

Sound effects licensed under Creative Commons 0 from FreeSound.org:

Production Notes

Tall And True Short Reads is produced using Audacity. Thanks to Josh (VoiceOverMaster) Meyer for Audacity recording tips and tricks.

Podcast episodes are recorded in Sydney, Australia, on the land of the traditional custodians of the Eora Nation.

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