The micro-story is characterized by its conciseness and tension.
A micro story is a very short story . The term is formed with the prefix micro- (which refers to something very small) and the noun story (story).
Narration in a nutshell
A micro-story is therefore a narrative that contains few words . This type of text usually uses ellipsis to provoke a surprise : that is, it eliminates certain elements of the discourse without affecting the meaning of the story.
The reader usually has to take an active role in the micro-story. This is because he or she often needs to reconstruct the ending or conclusion, or even imagine what is not explicit in the text .
While traditional stories are usually structured with an introduction , a middle , a development and an ending , micro-stories appeal to a more limited framework. The climax comes with something surprising or an unexpected twist .
Regarding brevity , there are many authors who consider this aspect insufficient to distinguish a micro-story from other genres, since there are examples at both extremes: some that are very short but belong to another genre, and others that are micro-stories but their length is greater than expected. That is why we must pay attention to the other characteristics, such as tension and conciseness , to say also through omission, so that the reader really has to get involved in the interpretation of the text and does not receive all the data explicitly.
Origins
The origins of the micro-story are found in parables , fables and other works that were born long ago. As a modern genre, the micro-story has its own characteristics, such as extreme brevity, the condensation of the temporal and the simplicity of its structure.
Important Latin American writers have tried their hand at micro-stories, including Ana María Shua , Augusto Monterroso , Julio Cortázar , Pía Barros , Cristina Peri-Rossi and Juan José Arreola . Monterroso , in fact, is responsible for one of the most popular micro-stories, which consists of just seven words : “When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there.”
Ellipsis and intertextuality
Ellipsis is a rhetorical figure achieved by omitting one or more terms in a clause, even breaking the rules of grammar in order to rely on contextual understanding . A very common example is the omission of a verb, replacing it with a comma: «Marta bought six books but Laura, only one» . In this case, the comma indicates that Laura performed the same action, «buy».
Regarding intertextuality, we can say that it is the link that exists between two or more texts, whether or not they are from the same period. This can occur explicitly or implicitly and affects creation as well as reading.
Monterroso's micro-story that mentions a dinosaur is one of the most popular.
Micro-story on the Internet
It is worth noting that social media has contributed, in recent years, to a boom in micro-stories. Twitter in particular, imposes a limit of 280 characters per post. Within this framework, several contests have emerged that reward the best micro-stories.
This is not the first example of technology serving art, in a particular and perhaps surprising way. In this case, we see social media, which many associate with a waste of time and a need to show one's life in a plastic way, as a tool that promotes creativity . Thanks to the character limit imposed by the creators of Twitter, writers of microfiction must squeeze their creativity to a level that would not be necessary in another medium. This may seem stifling at first, but many of the best works emerged from limitations , as well as suffering and lack of resources.