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On Twitter a few summers ago, I discovered the "Twitter fiction" trend: micro-fictions start to finish in under 140 characters. By the time I started writing them, there were entire literary journals established that were dedicated to the form, some publishing via Twitter, some on their own sites, but all following the format of a tweet. It's a great exercise in concision!

They're quite difficult. Some people's first reaction to hearing about them was that stories that compressed would be very hard to write, but I was first intrigued with the idea of writing a whole story in so few words, thinking less words, less time ... yeah, it didn't turn out that way. 

I think the hardest part for me is that so much of the story has to be implied, that you have to have a full sense of the character and plot arc before you even start writing; there's very little space to write into and explore the character. Once I get the story, paring it down to the appropriate length I found a little easier, but by then it's already a long way down the road. 

This is Twitter "novel" I wrote around Christmas-time 2 years ago, and was published in One Forty Fiction in December of 2011. For me, of the Twitter fictions I've written, it's the one that best conveys a full character and story in this few words: a true "momentary fiction"!

Merry Christmas!

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from One Forty Fiction

When donated Christmas boxes came, she gave all the little gifts in hers to the younger orphans. All except the doll. She'd never had one.