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My drabble writing went from 300 words to 100 and I finally like what comes out
For about two years I was writing flash fiction in the 250 to 350 word range and every single piece felt like a summary of a better story I never got around to writing. Then back in March I found an old writing prompt about a character finding a key with no lock, and something made me decide to cap the response at exactly 100 words. That first one took me almost 40 minutes because I kept cutting words that I thought I needed, like three different ways of describing the same rain. After about 15 of them over maybe three weeks, the whole thing flipped for me. Now the constraint does the work, and instead of stuffing in backstory I have to pick one image that carries the weight of everything else. My drafts also got faster, closer to 20 minutes each, and I actually finish them instead of abandoning them in a folder. Has anyone else tried capping their prompt responses at a hard word count, and did a specific number end up working better for you than an open limit?
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grace_hunt847d ago
The 100 word cap working better than "an open limit" makes sense because your brain finally has a target to hit instead of a vague space to fill. I noticed the same thing with time limits instead of word counts, giving myself 15 minutes forces a kind of decision making that an hour never does.
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