April is almost over, so I really needed to get writing for Apocalypse Madness. I didn’t want to write anything long (especially after the story I wrote for the February quote). So I did a bit of research into microfiction, and found first this article by David Gaffney, and then this article by Jason Gurley. With their tips in hand, I started writing. My resulting story is called “The Switch.” I know it doesn’t really deal with dreams, but that’s the beauty of Apocalypse Madness: the quotes are just a starting point.
The finished story ended up exactly 150 words, meeting David Gaffney’s recommended length for microfiction. I tried to keep his other tips in mind as I was writing. But this was my first conscious attempt at microfiction, so I don’t know how well I succeeded (but feel free to read “The Switch” and let me know how I did in the comments either here or on Apocalypse Madness).
Parts of “The Switch” seemed familiar to me as I was writing them. Kind of like I’ve written about this stuff before. So I went looking through previous stories I’ve written on Apocalypse Madness and almost immediately found “The Mirror Traveller.” Like “The Switch,” “The Mirror Traveller” deals with people switching places with their reflections.
Also, fun fact: the name Toshi is Japanese and apparently means “mirror reflection.” I thought that was particularly fitting for this story.
An Acquaintance with Letters 