Microfiction Examples: Four Originals Under 100 Words and One Grown to 100
Quick answer: Four original microfiction pieces of around fifty words each, notes on what the form can and cannot do, and one example expanded to a contest-ready 100 words.
Microfiction is fiction under about 300 words, and in practice the term is used most for pieces under 100: stories that fit in a breath. The form has a distinguished history, from Kafka's shortest parables to Lydia Davis's one-paragraph fictions, and a wide amateur one on social media. What separates a microfiction from a fragment is that something happens. The four original pieces below are each around fifty words. After them, notes on the form's limits and one of the four grown to exactly 100 words.
Four originals
Alarm. Every morning at 6.15 Fatima's phone played the ringtone her son had set as a joke before he went to university. She could have changed it. She turned the volume down instead, one notch a week, so that by June she was waking to something she could only just hear.
Ledger. The tailor kept his customers' measurements in a book going back to 1961. When Mr Bankole died, his son came in for a suit and the tailor turned to the old page, saw a chest measurement from 1987, and cut the new suit two inches wider without saying why.
Fence. Petra and the man next door had argued about the fence for six years. When she came out one morning and found him on a ladder, painting her side, she stood with her coffee and watched, and did not ask, and the next Saturday she did his.
Signal. On the mountain road the radio lost the station and found another, in a language Tomasz did not speak, playing a song his mother had sung in the kitchen in Gdańsk. He pulled over. He sat until it finished, then drove on before the presenter could tell him what it was called.
What the form can do
Each of these turns on one act: a volume knob, a chest measurement, a paintbrush, a pulled-over car. There is no room for a second act, so the pieces stop as soon as the first has landed. Alarm compresses a year into a sentence about notches. Ledger lets a number carry a father and son. Fence resolves six years with a paint tin and no dialogue. Signal ends on a refusal to know, which is the story's whole argument about memory.
What microfiction cannot do is develop. There is no arc of change across scenes, only a single change seen up close. If your idea has two turns, it is flash fiction; if it has one, it may be microfiction; if it has none, it is a description.
Growing Signal to 100 words
The 52-word version is complete. Here it is at exactly 100 words, which is the floor for most flash contests.
On the mountain road above Zakopane the radio lost the station and found another, in a language Tomasz did not speak, Slovak perhaps, playing a song his mother had sung at the sink in Gdańsk while potatoes boiled. He had not heard it in thirty years. He pulled onto the gravel and cut the engine and sat with his hands on the wheel until the last verse. Then, before the presenter could come on and tell him its name and its singer and make it ordinary, he switched the radio off and drove the rest of the way in silence.
The additions are a place name, a guess at the language, a kitchen detail, a number of years, and a longer final sentence that explains the refusal without stating the feeling. The act is unchanged.
What writers can take from this
- One act, one object, then stop.
- Use a number to compress time: notches, inches, years.
- Let the second character be present but silent.
- If the piece has two turns, it is flash; cut one or grow it.
- To reach 100, add a place name and a kitchen detail before anything else.
Try it yourself
Write four microfictions of under 60 words, each turning on a single physical act and containing no dialogue. Grow the one with the most specific object to exactly 100 words.
Questions
What is the difference between microfiction and flash fiction?
Length and shape. Flash fiction runs up to about 1,000 words and can hold a small arc with two or three beats. Microfiction stays under roughly 300, often under 100, and holds one beat. Every microfiction is flash; not every flash is micro.
Who are the best-known microfiction writers?
Lydia Davis is the contemporary standard, with one-paragraph and one-sentence fictions. Kafka's shortest parables are an older model, and Augusto Monterroso's one-line dinosaur story is often cited as the shortest complete story in Spanish.
Can microfiction be submitted to contests?
Some contests specialise in it, with limits of 50, 100 or 250 words. General flash contests usually set a floor around 100, so a 60-word microfiction would need growing, as the example above shows.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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