Microfiction Monday #1

Welcome to (the very first) Microfiction Monday,

where a picture paints 140 characters.

Here's this week's picture, and my story to go with it:

"Oh shut up," he said. "Remember who's paying for dinner?"

She excused herself to the ladies' room.

An hour later, he remembered who drove.

---

About Microfiction Monday

Microfiction means the shortest of short stories. Think Aesop's fables, comic strips, or even jokes: they're complete stories that can be told in under a minute. For this game, the limit is a tweetable 140 characters or fewer.

Every Sunday evening I'll post my own 'microfiction' inspired by a photo or illustration. If you'd like to join me, just use that week's picture for your own 140-story, and let your imagination go wild. If that degree of brevity scares you, feel free to use my own microfiction of the week as your first line instead, and spin something longer.

You can leave your story in the comments here, or post on your own blog and leave your link in these comments instead: I'll switch to Mr. Linky if we get a few folks playing along.

Hate counting letters and spaces? Try writing your story using Design 215's character counter, which will count for you as you type. Twitter counts down your characters from 140 as you go and is free to join. Microsoft Word will count for you too, of course, as part of its word count feature under the 'Review' tab.

Photos will be from my own archives; illustrations are by Dover Publications.

And finally, why 140? A whole new fiction market has arisen via mobile phone texting and on Twitter, who limits 'tweets' to 140 characters including spaces and punctuation. It's fast, it's fiction, it's fun. Here's a list of Twitterzines if you'd like to read some shortest-of-the-short stories:

Nanoisms
PicFic
escarp
Thaumatrope
Seedpod
Tweet the Meat
Slightly longer works are at:

Flashshots
Flashes in the Dark
Flashquake