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I have been writing fiction for quite a while, and if I counted my childhood, where I wrote small stories in folded sheets of paper and tried to sell them to my parents, it would be even longer. Even in all that time, besides the stories themselves, I had never created anything — until I wrote my first 100 x 100 micro novel (which I have on multiple occasions referred to as a “Novel in 100-Word Stories” in an effort to make it easier for the reading public to understand the concept).
It started as a “what if,” like many other curiosities do. What if I wrote the arc of a novel in 100 chapters containing exactly 100 words each? I had written collections of 100-word stories before, something that has roots that go back to Paul Strohm’s Sportin’ Jack, followed by Grant Faulkner’s Fissures, and while the 100-word story as a form has taken off and is enjoyed by writers across the world, no one had strung them together into a larger story until I published A Burst of Gray. Shortly afterwards, I began to challenge my creative writing students, as well as other writers, to try their hands at the form. Few took me up on it, but eventually one of my students locked into the form and is working on what I sense will be an amazing book that only she could write. Should she ever publish it, I will be her biggest fan. As of this date, though, only one writer, whom I met through my wife, has successfully created a 100 x 100 micro book (nonfiction, as opposed to fiction) and that is Glenn Hadley, who wrote a wonderful book about how he met his wife and the life they built together titled An Evolving Love Story of 100-Word Chapters: Volume 1. I highly recommend it for those of you who would love to see an excellent example of the form being used to write a memoir. But how in the world can you (1) write a full story using 100-word chapters, and (2) have the audacity to call anything that amounts to 10,000 words a novel? Let’s start with the latter. I realize others are prepared to die on this hill, but to me a novel is not necessarily dictated by length; it is dictated by development. And if you’d like to dig a little deeper, you might find that many “novels” are in fact not even novels; they are novellas. And to compound that, many of those books that are technically novels are really bloated novellas. In short, I think we waste a lot of time relying on definitions like this, but if you are a stickler for the 50,000+ word definition, then feel free to refer to the 100 x 100 micro novel as a novella or novelette, but do note that I say “micro” novel, which emphasizes a tremendous amount of distillation and brevity. So I will happily use this oxymoron until someone can come up with something better. Now, for the former question. If you think about the narrative arc of a story — and consider that 100 chapters is a nice, clean number to gage percentages — then you can sense where a story should be 75 chapters in or where a hook should be in the earlier part of a book. It’s not rocket science; it’s measured storytelling. Where it gets interesting, though, is how you select the right scenes and arrange them so that the chapters can breathe like chapters and move the narrative forward. Writing a 100 x 100 micro novel (or a 50 x 50 micro novella) is all about carefully curating the moments that are essential to the larger story arc. Dialogue and descriptions must be more carefully chosen. The desire to engage in insane bouts of literary logorrhea must be controlled. And like any other form of microfiction, you must feel comfortable implying things, as opposed to saying them explicitly. One last question: how is this different from a “flash novel” (a term coined by Nancy Stohlman) or a “novella-in-flash” (a term that has flourished throughout the U.K.)? I could talk about a number of things, but it would only obfuscate the one key thing that matters: the 100 x 100 micro novel is built around a rigid word count and structure. Every single book written like this (sans the chapter titles) is exactly 10,000 words. The other forms, while challenging in their own ways, don’t have exact word counts or lengths. As of this writing, I have written three of these types of books: A Burst of Gray, Black Marker, and GloKat and the Art of Timing. Will I write more? Definitely. I have ideas for novels that never got completed to my satisfaction in the longer form that I feel will work well with this new structure. If, however, you’re writing the next Don Quixote, you might need more than 100 chapters to pull that off. (I say this in jest, but I might very well undertake a task like this myself, just to see if I might be able to entertain Lydia Davis for a brief moment.) If you have dabbled in drabbles (100-word stories), I invite you to challenge yourself and write a 100 x 100 micro novel, as it is feeling kind of lonely out here right now. :) Happy writing!
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 My daughter was born two years after I published my first book, and a few years later, she asked me, “Daddy, when are you going to write a book I can read?”
I know many children have probably asked their writer-parents to create something for them, but I will say this from experience: if you are not already inclined to write for children, trying to do so requires Herculean effort. My first two novels were romantic comedies. My third was a blues triptych. I have had stories published in horror and erotic anthologies. In other words, I know my way around polite (and impolite) language. But even in all of that, I struggled to write something my daughter could read. So it became a bucket list item. I would write a story for her (while she was still a kid), and it would be magical in the way that the books I read as a kid were. Still, for the life of me, I didn’t have any ideas about what to write. The thought of writing for my daughter froze me in my tracks. Then something quite serendipitous happened in early 2022. Out of the blue, I received an email from Matthew Garcia-Dunn, the Chief Narrative Officer at the video game startup Worldspark Studios. He informed me that not only had he read my book A Burst of Gray: A Novel in 100-Word Stories, he’d made it required reading for his company. An email with news that good quickly made me think I was on the receiving end of a con, but I still followed up with him. I figured, being a lawyer, that I would be able to sniff out anything suspicious, if it came to that. What did happen, however, was a wonderful conversation about creating characters in different universes and an invitation to come work at the company helping to develop the lore around the game. Worldspark, unlike other gaming companies, wanted to present positive characters and storylines, devoid of violence and hyper-sexualization. In short, they wanted to create fun games and stories that would appeal to both kids and adults alike. Hopepunk, if you will. After reviewing the amazing list of characters the narrative team had already created, I homed in on GloKat (brilliantly named by Emma Coats). Seeing this vibrant Black girl in her yellow and blue cat-like anime parka immediately put me in the mindset of my own daughter, and I knew I wanted to be the one to help tell that character’s story. Much to Worldspark’s credit, they saw the value in publishing a book around one of their key characters, and that began the process of working on the book with the Narrative team, Matthew Garcia-Dunn and Abigail Harvey. The team allowed me to write the book I had in me to write, which was surprising, as I had been struggling to create stories my daughter could read. Now, suddenly, with a team of people completely invested in these characters, I found that something inside of me “sparked,” and I began composing this book using a form I had pioneered with A Burst of Gray: writing a 100x100 micro novel, which is essentially a novel written in 100 chapters containing 100 words each. The goal was to create something in the realm of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, except through the lens of Black Girl Magic and Afrofuturism. I would use other characters from the gaming universe, and write a story that would allow fans of the game, as well as those who were purely interested in the story, to enjoy the story. Even more, I saw in this book something my own daughter could read — better yet, something I would be both proud and honored for her to read. So that’s what I did. And GloKat and the Art of Timing: A Novel in 100-Word Stories was born. A book is only as good as its editors, though, and having both Matthew and Abigail believing in the project and pointing out areas that could strengthen the book made the process (not just the writing itself) pleasantly memorable. Even more, the larger Worldspark team was enormously supportive, especially Chandler Thomlison, the company’s founder and CEO. Finally, Alvin Lee, the legendary comic book artist and principal artist at Worldspark, designed one of the most beautiful, vibrant covers I could have ever imagined. When everything was completed and published, I stared in awe at this small book, this representation of something I had always wanted to write. I had finally written a story about a Black girl on a quest to find her father, while simultaneously seeking a way to save her Earth from becoming completely uninhabitable. It literally gave me goosebumps to hand this book to my daughter. She read it in a single day and loved it! Since then, many readers have journeyed with GloKat through Sparkadia. (Have you?) My daughter’s signed copy now sits on her bookshelf, next to other books she’s read. This one is special, though. It is the only one there that was written by her father, the only book among the group that was written especially for her. |
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