Think outside every box, including this one. 
Listen between the lines of every speech, including this one.
Challenge every teacher, including me.
Question advice, including mine.
Dissect every certainty, especially your own.
Doubt every faith, including your parents’.
Love everyone, including yourself.
Go forth, be kind, do good, have fun.

Browse more microstories


Explainer: What are microstories?

These precisely fifty-word studies in minimalism are intended to start a silent, asynchronous conversation with the reader. Each is illustrated by a photo or image. No backstory is provided for context. Each story is the tip of a desiccated iceberg whose vast subsurface region is left to your imagination, that hydrating fluid stirred to the surface, Rorschach-like, by your own rich mental underworld. How? Simply notice the image that appears to your mind's eye, the tug at your heart, the punch to your gut. You thereby complete the story triggered by this story stem. Browse, let your mind wander, follow it there, repeat.

Microstories come in several varieties:

Micropoem. A form of unrhymed, unlineated prose poetry, micropoems employ poetic features such as metaphor, imagery, dense language, personification, diction, enjambment, ambiguity, emotional intensity, and figurative phrasing.

Microsaga. This novel variant adopts the perspective or persona of an actual or fictional character in a historical or foreign scenario depicted by the associated photo or image.

Microphilo. Philosophical musings compressed into a dense statement or question that invites inquisitive readers to exercise their reasoning capacities to expand their own personal worldview, often quite different from the author's.

Microjourney. A tightly chiseled block of travelogue capturing moments along the road of life, accompanied by a photo of the scene. 

Browse recent additions at my microstory incubator and haiku incubator where I preside as Haiku Laureate.

Links:
~ Who is Dan? 
~ Dan's books
~ Query letter to publishers and literary agents, domestic and international
~ Website