Writing Battle Summer 2025 Nanofiction

Sep 7

Writing Battle is back — it’s one of the greatest online writing competitions there is — and this time, we’re writing micro (or nano) fiction: 250-word stories! My cards came out pretty well.

Microfiction? What’s That?

Microfiction/nanofiction is a form of storytelling that is often capped at 250 words, with some as low as 50 or 100, and reflects an extreme compression of narrative. Press 53 offers a monthly 53-word story contest, if you’d believe it.

Micro/nano forms strip a story down to its bare essentials to capture a single moment in time: a conflict, an image, a twist, or an emotion. Unlike longer forms of flash, micros/nanos rarely have space for full character arcs, secondary characters, long-winded descriptions, or detailed exposition. Rather, micros deliver a punch through suggestion, implication, stereotypes, and resonance; what’s unsaid often matters more than what’s written.

Readers engage this form by filling in the blanks. They imagine the backstory, motives, or consequences implied through careful word choice, tone, and structure. Good micro/nano stories often feel like a shard of a larger world, with edges visible but unexplored.

Micros and Haikus

I feel there’s a kinship between the art of microfiction and haiku, even though one is prose and the other is poetry. Both forms demand compression, precision, and resonance — telling a compelling story with little space. With both:

Brevity is a discipline; every word must justify its place.
Their focus is on a singular moment. Where haiku captures a fleeting image found in nature (a frog jumps, cherry blossoms fall, snow melts), I feel microfiction captures an emotion through a compressed narrative scene (an overheard conversation, a deathbed conversation, a sacrifice).
Worldbuilding is implied. The form can’t detail everything about the world, but it can use inference and stereotypes to help build the larger world in the head of the reader. It invites the reader to expand the text into something larger than its length.
The ending resonates. Haikus often end with a shift or contrast (the ‘kireji’ cut) that recontextualizes or reframes the image. With micros, they’ll end with a twist, a reversal, or an emotional sting that makes the reader reconsider what they read. Both perform a pivot that changes or deepens meaning.

Strategies for Writing Micros

Focus on a Single Core Idea or Emotion.
- And every word should serve that one purpose: reveal grief, twist expectations, deliver horror, spark laughter, or crystallize a revelation.
- Don’t get distracted! Focus on the one emotion throughout the work. Layer it, build it, intensify that thought in any way you can — through scene, dialogue, and action.
Start as Close as You Can to the End.
- Start close to the conflict. You have to drop right into it.
- There’s no room for setup. Readers get thrust into the middle of a scene (a fight, a whispered confession, a moment of revelation).
Economize Language.
- Each sentence, every word, must carry its weight.
- Strong verbs, concrete nouns, and precise sensory details.
- Cut filler (adverbs, explanations). Let the reader infer.
- If in doubt, cut it out. In my opinion, if a sentence doesn’t address the central theme/emotion I’m trying to convey, it doesn’t deserve a place in the story.
Imply the Larger World.
- Suggest a backstory with a single phrase or with a relationship with a single line of dialogue.
- This creates depth without wasting words.
- If you find yourself describing the world, you’re doing it wrong.
Employ Resonant Endings.
- Microfiction thrives on surprise, irony, reversal, or emotional sting.
- Micro endings should echo, making the reader reconsider the opening or feel a sudden shift.
- Does it compel the reader to re-read what they’ve just read? If so, you’re doing it right.
Exploit Ambiguity.
- With so little room, ambiguity becomes a tool.
- Leaving something unresolved or unsaid invites the reader to project, deepening engagement.
Revise Mercilessly.
- Microfiction isn’t just “a short story, but smaller.”
- I feel it’s closer to poetry: every syllable matters; the thought or feeling you’re trying to convey is what counts.
- Draft long, then refine to the bone.

Unity of Effect

Above all, I believe a good micro leaves a lasting unity of effect.

I’ve written about unity of effect before.

Edgar Allan Poe’s “unity of effect” is the idea that every element of a literary work (its plot, character, setting, style, description, tone) should be deliberately chosen to produce a single, powerful emotional impact on the reader. For Poe, the writer’s first task was to decide the intended effect they wanted to convey (terror, melancholy, awe, etc.), then construct the work so its components contribute to that effect.

This should sound familiar.

I believe this principle is found in the most successful short stories and poems, where brevity and tight focus ensure the reader experiences one sustained, unified impression. That’s a story’s unity of effect. Because of its brevity, microfiction must deliver a single, unified emotional or narrative punch. Whether that’s a gasp, a chill, or a pang of recognition, the whole piece should work toward that one outcome.

413

My story, 413, drops us into a hospital where a thief is discovered pilfering a storeroom, and a nurse — leveraging that moment — sends my thief on an errand.

I’m playing with several ideas here. Hospital. Thief. Nurse. Storeroom. I think an image has already been put into your mind.

So there’s the setting and the characters: the relationship between the nurse and thief is implied, and the conflict is already staged. This is the essence of writing micros — it’s already in your mind.

I feel that 413 achieves a clear unity of effect through its depiction of my thief’s survivalist detachment as it collides accidentally with a dying man’s redemption.

From the theft to the impersonation of Eli to the nurse’s final verdict, every element serves the theme of a man forced into sharing a moment of intimacy and reminded of his lost worth. The effect is bittersweet, blending guilt, grace, and fleeting connection.

The characters are archetypes — I don’t even name them. A young thief survives in the streets; a saintly nurse, tired, trying to comfort; a dying, repentant father. They exist only as ideas. Your imagination has filled in the rest.

The story’s trajectory (thief tries to steal, thief is caught; nurse leverages the thief to perform an act of goodwill; the thief must endure a trial only to learn something about himself in the process) maps closely to the “Voyage and Return” plot archetype: an unworthy soul faces a trial at sea and returns, and the ordeal changes them.

But you already know this story :) You’ve heard it before.

Enduring a trial, my thief finds value in himself by impersonating a son and listening to the dying words of a stranger. After, he changes. That’s the throughline, and that’s what I wanted to write about. Grief, dying, redemption.