Page 102 - Knighted_2018

Microfiction: Education and Appreciation
Sara Kathryn Smith

A new genre has bloomed in literary circles in recent years. This genre, called flash
fiction, is essentially a shortened short story. Within that genre is the subcategory of texts called
microfiction. Microfiction stories almost always have a gap of information. These gaps are not
mistakes, but opportunities for the reader to be involved in the story. Some of the kinds of
information might be the physical appearance of a character, their personal background, or the
setting details. Understanding the wide variety of characteristics allows the reader to see the
purpose for microfiction’s unusual characteristics. It is not there to frustrate or antagonize, but to
offer an opportunity. Microfiction stories strive to do what all literary texts do: bring attention to
something and encourage appreciation. These stories simply do it using unfamiliar techniques.
After explaining microfiction’s unique qualities, this paper will highlight those same qualities in
three microfiction stories, specifically what is observable and definite in the stories and what is
hidden and left out.

It is important to explain what flash fiction is before discussing one of its subgenres:
microfiction. Defining the genre is difficult because, like all strict definitions, there are
exceptions. Instead of having a definitive definition, it is important to give a few guidelines. José
Flávio Nogueira Guimarães discusses some guidelines for flash fiction in his paper, “The Short-
Short Story: The Problem of Literary Genre”. He says, “The contemporary short-short with its
whole mélange of stylistic features, open beginnings and ends, away from the tradition, still finds
a form of its own. […] It will always be a hybrid form,” (16). He believes the flash fiction genre
is a blended genre because it combines aspects of traditional short stories, poems, and journalism
into one text (9). The length of flash fiction is affected by the modern journalistic belief that

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