So after reading a sample of 50 word stories in my Writing Skills class, I decided to look up some more. I found this website, and scrolled through about 50 or so. Some were good, some were bad. Some relied pretty heavily on the title. (Not a bad thing. Just interesting) Some relied entirely on the last line to 'make' the story. Some were composed entirely of overblown description, some had no description whatsoever. One story introduced the word 'redux' to me, which led me off onto an entirely different path (more later).
The best thing I found about 50 word stories was the way their length made them memorable; the better ones lingered in your head, key phrases and lines sticking for hours. The worst thing was the way the form could often make the text seem forced; sometimes it seemed as if writers had used words merely because they needed an extra word. Sometimes lines seemed superfluous, and the text became repetitive and dull. It's an interesting idea, but I think that it's too strict to allow much creativity. While it occasionally works well, most of the stories seemed forced and unnatural; the leeway of a few words either way probably would have improved them.
Oh, and one last thing; a redux, in literary terms, means 'brought back' or 'restored'. It generally refers to a text that has been 'restored' in some way; for example, fairytales are often 'restored' from the original oral forms to written versions by people like the Grimm brothers, and Hans Christian Anderson. What interested me was that the word 'redux' itself, implies that texts are seperate from their authors, and 'restoring' them is just as valid a process as creating them. One version of a reduxed fairytale is just as significant as another, irregardless of who lays claim to the original.
