Editor Interview: 50-Word Stories

Fifty-word-long stories.

Lately I've been following EveryDayFiction.com and RayGunRevival.com quite a bit. I like the way they do things, and I especially appreciate the variety on EDF.
Daily Science Fiction publishes a lot of really good stories, and has a new one every day, which is definitely something I can get behind!

I love the classics, so Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Charles Dickens, and Jonathan Swift are all at the top of my list. For more contemporary authors, I'm a big fan of Orson Scott Card, JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, and a whole lot more.

Fifty-Word Stories is unique because it is the only publication in the world (that I know of) that exclusively publishes microfiction in the exactly-50-words format.

Make sure to do your word count and meet the exactly-50-words rule! Your story should go somewhere; your characters should do something. The reader should feel like something has taken place, either within the events of the story or within the reader's own eyes. Accomplishing this is the whole challenge of the 50-word format, and I'm sure you'll find it as rewarding as I do!
Be sure to read through the guidelines on the Submissions page on FiftyWordStories.com.

There are so many different ways to write a good 50-word story. You can go for humour, deep emotion, wonder, or whimsy. The ideal story should have a purpose or intention, and should clearly convey that to the reader.

Most people don't make big mistakes when they're submitting, but I do appreciate when people include some information in the Subject line of their email to help me identify their story when I'm sorting things.
Also, every now and then someone sends in a "50 words or fewer" story, not realizing that it's supposed to be exactly 50 words. Don't make that mistake!

Cover letters aren't necessary. You're free to include some publication credits as part of your bio, though.

The beauty of 50-word stories is that they're so short; it's easy to read them all the way through a few times before I make my mind up!

When submissions get really busy, I'll short-list several and sometimes bring in a second opinion on which are the best, but more often a story either makes the cut the first time I see it, or it doesn't.

Ideally, I spend an hour or two once each week going through the week's submissions and sorting them based on whether or not they meet the quality bar to be published. I typically schedule each day's stories a day or two in advance and notify the authors by email. Each weekend I review the past week's stories and select a Story of the Week, and each month I review the Story of the Week winners and pick a Story of the Month winner from among them.

I rarely edit submitted stories, but occasionally I will tweak word choice for flow or style, or fix an erroneous word count if it based on a mistake (such as counting hyphenated words, like "fifty-word," as two words instead of one). If a story is more than one or two words out, or fixing the word count would potentially alter the author's intent, I will email the author and ask for or propose a rewrite.