The short story is characterized by its concision and tension.
A microstory is a very short story . The term is formed with the prefix micro- (which refers to something very small) and the noun narration (story).
Narration in a few words
A narrative that contains few words is called a microstory, therefore. 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 what is narrated.
In general, the reader has to assume an active role in the short story. This is because many times you need 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 outcome , micro-stories appeal to a more limited outline. The climax comes with something surprising or an unforeseen twist .
Regarding brevity , there are many authors who consider this aspect insufficient to distinguish a microstory from other genres, since there are examples at both extremes: some that are very short but belong to another genre, and others that are microstories but their length is higher than expected. That is why we must pay attention to the other characteristics, such as tension and concision , to also say 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 short story are found in parables , fables and other works that were born a long time ago. As a modern genre, the short story has its own features, such as extreme brevity, the condensation of the temporal and the simplicity of its structure.
Important Latin American writers have ventured into short 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 short stories, which consists of just seven words : “When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there.”
Ellipsis and intertextuality
Ellipsis is a figure of speech achieved by omitting one or more terms in a clause, even breaking the rules of grammar 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."
With respect to intertextuality, we can say that it is the link that exists between two or more texts, whether or not they are from the same time. This can occur explicitly or implicitly and affects creation as much as reading.
Monterroso's short story that mentions a dinosaur is one of the most popular.
Micro-story on the Internet
It should be noted that social networks have contributed, in recent years, to a boom in short stories. Especially Twitter , which imposes a limitation of 280 characters per post. Within this framework, several contests emerged that reward the best short stories.
It is not the first example of technology at the service of art, in a particular and perhaps surprising way. In this case, we see that social networks, 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 Twitter creators, short story writers must express their creativity to a level that would not be necessary in any other medium. This may seem suffocating at first, but many of the best works emerged from limitations , as well as suffering and lack of resources.