#011 Your 100 Word Story

Fridays shouldn’t be stressful but the kick-off to a great weekend! Because structure is important, writing your own 100 Word Story is back on Free Writing Fridays!

Whether it’s the start of an adventure with a cliffhanger or a poem needing to be told, you can still just write whatever you desire.

GUIDE

  • Most Important: Word length is exactly 100 words. I recommend using Google Docs as a scratch pad and go to Tools → Word Count and check the “Display word count while typing”

  • Genre? Totally up to you. Share a mystery. Give us thrills, chills, and suspense. Or make us shed a tear.

  • Fiction or non-fiction applies here. This is your blank canvas.

  • Copy/paste your story in the comments section for others to read. If you post it in your own Substack (highly recommended and encouraged) just share the link in the comments.

  • A Note on Notes | If you use Substack Notes, click the 🔄 “Restack with a Note” and copy/paste your story as a Note.

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Comments

  1. Mary Carroll Moore

    New subscriber here–but wanted to stop in and say how fun this is. I love micro fiction, and I admire Kathy Fish and others who are so talented at it. Thank you for this forum to explore our own skills and get writing!

  2. Reena Kapoor

    Also posted on Notes — here’s my poem for today…

    Here’s my 100 Word Poem for this Friday…

    In my kitchen at midnight…

    In my kitchen at midnight

    I coax chickpeas she demands,

    the day before she arrives.

    I know she likes them sour

    and piquant, spicy and rich.

    Lining spices, I carry

    love, a heavy bottomed pot.

    I roast anardana, zeera,

    Tez patta, laung, amchur — young

    mangoes once, now powdered dry.

    Peel and chop, ready flavors that

    burgeon over searing flame.

    She’s in my kitchen. More

    than hunger. She sees me

    ladle caution as I serve,

    Why’d you worry for me, Ma?

    I laugh, not speak out loud, You’ll

    know the day you’re disarmed by

    a tiny, defenseless one…

    – reena kapoor | 7/21/23

  3. Feasts and Fables

    We Have to Let You Go

    Convince me, he had said. You have one hundred words to save your job. Bastard. I’ve been here seven years. Since it was a flashy start-up. I did the long days, the late nights, the early starts. Jesus, I didn’t even draw a wage until January. That made for a pretty shitty Christmas. But I digress. One hundred words, you say? What can I say to convince you? Without me you’d be … no, what about, I would love just five more weeks to finish the … no, okay, so what about ‘fuck your job, you despicable piece of …’

  4. Michael P. Marpaung

    Title: My Idiot Dad

    Everything all set up. I signed on the dotted lines. I had become a soldier.

    Well, not quite thanks to my idiot dad.

    Since I was still in high school, I needed my parents to sign off my recruitment papers. But he refused to do so. Naturally, I was pissed. You’d think 9/11 would have enraged him as much as it did me. He insisted that Iraq had nothing to do with New York.

    He didn’t budge, no matter how heated I got. Soon, I dropped the subject.

    I didn’t know it at the time, but he saved my life.

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