NEWS: Freshen Up With a Ficlet

CULTURE: Freshen Up With a Ficlet

Microfiction has a new brand name: Ficlets. "A ficlet," according to the new and beautifully designed Ficlets Web site, "is a short story that enables you to collaborate with the world." Ficlets is part of the AOL's AIM network (since when has AIM had its own network? Does nobody tell me anything?), and you can sign in with your AIM screen name to pen a short-short story to which other users can then add sequels or prequels, in addition to regular ol' comments. The length of a ficlet is capped at 1,024 characters, which looks to be just under a couple hundred words.



Navigating the site reminds me of old-style 'Choose Your Own Adventure' novels for teenagers: you jump from a story, to its sequel, to that sequel's sequel—and then you click back a couple layers to choose a different sequel and check out the alternate scenarios that spun out from that one. It's like the 'exquisite corpses' and other wordy games that my friends and I whiled away our time with in middle school. (Dorky, maybe, but what would you expect from a future librarian?)



Ficlets is also sort of a social networking site, in which each author can write a profile with a thumbnail image, 'about me' text, and maybe a link to a personal blog or Web site.



So get on over there and lend a talented hand, already. Maybe someone will fall completely in love with your short-short story chops, check out your profile, click to your blog, and offer you a big fat book deal. Or fall in love with you. Or both.



Hey, that scenario would make a great ficlet. Oooh! Oooh! I think I just invented a new genre: "Metaficlet."



Womp-womp. That was pretty bad, no? You don't have to thank me.

I wonder how long until everyone just writes dirty stories... not that I'm complaining

I am so pleased right now to be not-the-only-person-in-the-world who says "whomp whomp."

This reminds me of an extreme version of fifty-word fiction.

this has gotta be the cutest article I've ever read

So...if each letter/character is a byte...and your limited to 1024, that would mean a ficlet is only 1 kb? Just an observation.

I was thinking this was some new kind of gum.