People are generally verbose. Books with only 50 pages don't tend to sell very well and people don't seem to think much of an article that has just a hundred words as opposed to a thousand. We are taught to summarise suprisingly verbosely in English lessons, I remember often being given 250-300 words to summarise something I could happily have done in 100 but ironically, I would have been told off for using such few words. A nice thing about 55 fiction is that any summary will usually be longer than the actual work.

If you read for pleasure and to kill a few hours then verbosity can be a fine thing. Lots of old English authors were paid by the word and this shows in their books - Dickens and Collins are hugely verbose but not many people will deny that generally they are a good read. There does seem to be a tendency these days for authors to go a tad overboard though - Carrying two Steven King books, a Tom Clancy book and maybe for good measure, a Brian Lumley book will like as not give you a hernia; they are great for pressing wild flowers but as reading material and aeroplane hand luggage, things are getting a little ridiculous. The James Bond books, and the Saint books are nice and thin, why does Clancy think his need to be 20 times thicker? They are certainly not 20 times better...

55 word fiction is an art form that is fun and educational to try. Because of the lack of room for description the plot is foremost and nothing else really matters - If the plot aint good, there's no story but, the good thing is, if the story is crap, you only waste a minute finding out.

The History of 55-Fiction:

The "official" site for 55 Fiction is still at the New Times and it is well worth a visit. There are a lot of examples by lots of people on here, some very good and some not. They do explain things well though and you can submit your work to the annual competitions.

The Rules:

• A peice of 55-fiction must be a peice of fiction, not a poem, essay, a scene or an errant thought. The New Times says that the story should have:
  1. A setting.
  2. A character or characters.
  3. Conflict.
  4. Resolution.

• Subject to the above, the story can be about anything you want, but it should be no more than 55 words. You can write LESS than 55 words if you want. The following definitions of words apply:
  1. If it is in the dictionary (or in common usage) it is a word.
  2. A hyphenated word does not count as a single word unless it cannot stand as single words when the hyphen is removed. The word "re-entry" is a single word, the word "tea-stained" is not. (To confuse things, the word tee-tree is a single word to my mind).
  3. A word contraction is a single word, so "they will" can become "they'll" and you will save a word.
  4. Initials count as words, since they only abbreviations. Standardly accepted abbreviations however, such as NASA and MS will count as single words.
  5. Numbers count as words... 4296 is a single word, "four thousand, two hundred and ninety-six" is seven words... Take your pick!
  6. Use as much punctuation as you want, it doesn't alter the word count.

• The title does not count towards the word count and you can have up to seven words. If you are clever, you can often use the title to add a lot to the basic story.

• Although not an "official" rule, the layout of the story can often add a lot without altering the word count...

• Of course - The best writers in history have often broken all of the rules and somehow got away with it - So... Why not?

My stories:

Secondly though, I do always try to use exactly 55 words. I suspect that this is merely just perversity on my side though.

I write 55's for a couple of reasons. I have the attention span of a gnat on speed - I like writing fiction, but I very soon get bored of all of the "padding" that most fiction requires. If I am bored of it I can only assume my readers will be as well so I make the things I write short and try and change topics frequently. The other major reason I write these is as a balance for the sheer amount of Non-Fiction I write. It helps to keep my mind on being succinct and to the point and it also takes my mind off the Non-Fiction for a while and helps my writer's block.

You may be suprised at the odd format of the stories I write - Why present them as a printed page and not just a normal web page? Well, each of these is carefully crafted and 55 words looks pretty insignificant on a page alone so I thought I would spend a bit of effort making them look pretty. Hope it works.

And now... Back to the stories.