A Taste of Childhood: Fifty Word Microfiction
When I broke the skin on the chocolate pudding, my mouth watered. A tiny taste sucked from the upside-down spoon set my heels kicking the chair. I was a little kid again, sitting on the tall orange stool by the stove, getting to scrape the pot when Mom finished cooking.
This is my fifty-worder for this week's prompt from Jayna Locke (@jayna). Unlike most of my writing for these, this is a vignette.
I'm sure that's a word some of you have heard before but aren't sure what it means and others have never even heard.
A vignette is a piece of a scene, usually something evocative that shows emotion or shows a character. The key difference from a story is that it, quite simply, doesn't tell a story. It lacks the beginning, middle, and end typical of a story (although you can barely differentiate them in stories this short) and more importantly, lacks plot and character arc.
A plot arc is the series of events in a story that lead to a sense of conclusion. Here I have only tasting pudding. Not much happens, does it?
A character arc is the process of change--or resistance to change--a character undergoes throughout a story. The arc is generally more subtle in tight microfiction, but in a true story, it's there. The arc is the sense that the character comes out of the story different than they went in. Or that they stayed the same despite pressures that normally would change a person. For more about character arc, refer to this article.
So I hope this helps you fifty-worders out there (and other writers) understand what a vignette is. Once you understand the difference between story and vignette, it's a whole lot easier to make sure you actually provide a story when it's your intention.
Vignettes like this can be awesome and powerful. But they aren't complete stories.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://www.rjeanbell.com/2018/09/15/a-taste-of-childhood-fifty-word-microfiction/
That's so true. Tastes can have a powerful effect. I have had memories that i thought lost reactivated just by tasting something i had not tried in years. Sometimes memories come with the very smell of those childhood treats, or by reading a story like this. Thanks
Thank you. Tastes and smells can trigger both good and bad memories. I enjoyed doing this one and really didn't feel like it needed to be a story to stand alone. It actually started as part of an exercise offered by @ink-ubator.
I love this vignette, @bex-dk. It's so true, as @hlezama said, that tastes can have a powerful effect and can bring back ancient memories we may not realize are lingering there in our subconscious.
Thank you for the description of vignettes, and how they differ from stories. I've been trying to explain this very thing with the workshop portion of this post each week, but I'm not sure whether anyone reads it!
The fact is, it's very difficult to get an entire story into 50 words. Fortunately, as you said, vignettes can certainly be powerful too.
I usually manage with a whole story, but I'm one of those people who enjoys the challenge of it. I just felt like this one was powerful enough on its own. Thanks for the kick to get me to do it. I'd planned to but had so much going on I got distracted.
Remember that you are getting people writing who might not try otherwise. The learning part can seep in slowly. But yes, I do read all of the post each week... once I find it. Gina just refuses to alert me even though I am tagged.