Yes! You Can Be a Famous Writer!

You can enter all year long and submit as many stories as you like. Winners in our annual contest will be published in New Times and Sun newspapers.

Deadline: Three weeks prior. All stories will be considered for our next book.

Now that you've become a 55 Fiction believer, it's your turn to write a 55-word short story so we can consider it for our next contest and for inclusion in our sequel to "The World's Shortest Stories." And what luck: We just happen to have the official rules right here to help guide you when crafting a mere 55 words into one of the truly great stories of our time.

Writing a 55 Fiction story isn't as easy as it looks.

A haiku poem is short. So is a quarterback sneak. But nobody thinks they're simple to execute—it's just that the people who do them well make it seem that way.

Taking a great story concept and developing it within such a limited space is a little like carving a beautiful sculpture from a tiny block of wood. The working range is truncated and intimate, but the goal is no different than if you were creating on a much larger scale. You're trying to perfectly merge various elements into a coherent whole that ultimately makes people say, "Wow, that's really great!"

But don't be discouraged by such a lofty goal. Great storytelling starts with fair storytelling and gets better with practice. Ray Bradbury once told an audience that if they wanted to learn how to write, they should compose a short story every day.

"If you do that," he said, "by the end of the year you'll have written 365 stories“and, at the very least, three or four of them are bound to be good because it's impossible to write 365 bad stories!"

We've often thought about that when judging our 55 Fiction Contest each year. It's the perfect way for someone to apply Bradbury's One-Story-a-Day Theory of Writing. When you've mastered 55 words, you can go on to 110, then 220, and so on until you've written that great novel that's been inside you, struggling to get out.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. 55 Fiction is the name of this writing game, a tiny literary genre with a proud tradition stretching back a full twelve years to a time when finding good copy to fill our arts and entertainment publication, New Times, was tough to do. Out of this necessity rose 55 Fiction.

The first rule we always tell 55 Fiction writers may seem obvious, but it's broken more often than you might think. We tell them to remember that we're talking about fiction, not essays or poems or errant thoughts.

A lot of people have a hard time getting that straight, no doubt because they have a hard time believing that writing something so short is really possible. They usually end up with only part of a story, often with their character stranded in a situation going nowhere.

So although some may have a more complex definition of just what constitutes a "story," for our purposes, a story is a story only if it contains the following four elements: 1) a setting; 2) a character or characters; 3) conflict; and 4) resolution.

For those who think this is limiting their creativity, consider for a moment that:

All stories have to be happening someplace, which means they have to have a setting of some kind, even if it's the other side of the universe, the inner reaches of someone's mind, or just the house next-door.

Characters can have infinite variations. People, animals, clouds, microbes. Anything.

By conflict, we merely mean that in the course of the story, something has to happen. The lovers argue. The deer flees. The astronauts wait in anticipation. Even in this last example, something is happening, even though no one is moving or talking. There is conflict, which leads us to:

The outcome of the story, known also as the resolution. This doesn't necessarily mean that there's a moral ("Justice is its own reward," "In the end, love triumphs"), or even that the conflict itself is resolved. It may or may not be.

But what it does mean is that when the story ends, someone has to have learned something. Tony found out his wife wanted to kill him after all; the soldiers successfully eluded the enemy when they thought they'd been discovered; Barbara was shown to be as much of a liar as her father. It's even possible to have none of the characters learn anything. But if that's the case, then we, the reader, must.

Consider "Bedtime Story" by Jeffrey Whitmore ...

"Careful, honey, it's loaded," he said, re-entering the bedroom.
Her back rested against the headboard. "This for your wife?"
"No. Too chancy. I'm hiring a professional."
"How about me?"
He smirked. "Cute. But who'd be dumb enough to hire a lady hit man?"
She wet her lips, sighting along the barrel. "Your wife."

Besides having a terrific story idea, Whitmore also goes about telling it well. How he does so is worth examining.

Notice how much he achieves through suggestion. We know the characters are lovers, but the author never says so. We also know there's a gun in the story, but it's never directly mentioned. In fact, Whitmore's tale is actually two stories. The second one “the other conspiracy“ reveals itself in the final two words.

You'll also notice that there are no descriptive adverbs or adjectives, yet we see the entire scene perfectly. The author then stretches the form by having his story start even before his narrative begins, and end beyond his final phrase, making it seem longer than just 55 words.

The main advantage to suggestion is conveying information economically. When the reader knows what you're talking about without your saying so, fewer words are needed. The disadvantage, of course, is losing sight of whether the reader is following you. Too much suggestion becomes obscure and confusing. That's a common error. So is trying to tell too complicated a story in such a tiny space. This 55 Fiction demands a tight focus.

Telling a story in a traditional narrative mode is probably the best approach for new writers, but keep in mind that 55 Fiction encourages experimentation.

If you've got a copy of "The World's Shortest Stories," you'll know what we mean.

Can an entire story be told with every word starting with the same letter of the alphabet? Sure it can. You'll find it on page 69.

How about revealing a family's ongoing woes through just an answering machine's message? Check out page 131.

And on page 31, lovers meet clandestinely and discover more than they bargained for in a tale with only one sentence using almost all nouns.

Surprise endings are often found in 55 Fiction, but they're not a prerequisite for success. They probably turn up a lot because they're easy to work with and because many writers instinctively aim for the impact of a twist at the end. H. H. Munro had similar instincts in his finely crafted ministories. So did Rod Serling and Alfred Hitchcock in their famous half-hour TV programs. Pretty good storytellers to emulate.

A few other important points to keep in mind:

• You can write about anything you like, but you can't use more than 55 words. Yes, you can use fewer if you'd like to, but we don't know why anyone would. Don't shortchange yourself even more than we already have.
• And what, exactly, is a word? Simple. If it's in the dictionary, it's a word.
• Hyphenated words can't count as single words. For example, "blue-green dress" is three words, not two. Exceptions to this are any words that don't become two complete free-standing words when the hyphen is removed, like "re-entry."
• Also, please note that your story's title isn't included in the word count. But remember that it can't be more than seven words long.
• Contractions count as single words, so if you're really seeking word economy (as you should be), keep this in mind. If you write, "He will jump," it's three words. But if you write, "He'll jump," it's only two. Very economical. By the same token, any contraction that's a shortened form of a word is also counted as a full word. Like using "'em" for "them."
• An initial also counts as a word (L.L. Bean, e.e. cummings, etc.) since it's basically an abbreviation of a full word. The only exception is when it's part of an acronym like MGM, NASA, or IBM. The reasoning here is that the wide use of these acronyms has in effect made them into single words.
• Remember that numbers count as words, too, expressed as either numerals (8, 28, 500, or 1984), or as words (eight, twenty-eight, etc.). But keep in mind our hyphenated-word rule. "Twenty-eight" is two words when written out, but only one when expressed as 28. Don't cheat yourself out of an extra word that you may need.
• Any punctuation is allowed, and no punctuation marks count as words, so don't worry about being miserly with them if they work to some effect.
  There are a few clichés we suggest you avoid.

Unless you can come up with really fresh takes on these old chestnuts, stay away from stories where the reader eventually discovers the protagonist is a cat (or some other animal); characters appear to be having sex, but it turns out they're doing something innocent and mundane, and you just have a dirty mind; and any character who wakes up at the end and says, "Gosh, it was all a dream!" These find themselves in the trash pronto, as well they should.

So now that you've digested all the rules and you're putting all those great ideas of yours on paper, what are you going to do with the best ones after you've shown them to friends who all think you're brilliant? Good question. Here's a good answer. Send them to us so we can consider them for our next Fifty-Five Fiction book.

You can submit as many stories as you want, but remember that each story must be typed on its own sheet of paper. That means one story per page.

Make sure your name, address, and telephone number are included on each story, so we can contact you. This information needs to be with each one in case your stories get separated. Too many times, we've been unable to contact authors of great stories simply because they forgot this simple procedure.

So. If you think you've got some winning stories, put a stamp on that envelope and mail them off to us at Fifty-Five Fiction, Dept. 55, 1010 Marsh Street. San Luis Obispo, CA 93401. No matter what time of year it is, we'll see they're entered in our annual contest. Unfortunately, we can't be certain we'll be able to acknowledge receipt of your work, so please send photocopies, not originals. If any of your stories are selected, one thing's for certain: You'll be hearing from us.

And remember: Just 55 words.

Our 55 Fiction contest is held once a year, but you can submit stories all year long. Send them to 55 Fiction, 1010 Marsh Street, San Luis Obispo, CA 93401. You can also send a digital version to [email protected].