Two weeks ago, we asked you to write 280-character short stories, in honor of the unasked-for, unappreciated, and frankly awful increase in Twitter’s tweet length restrictions. Uncannily, we wound up with 280 submissions. (Actually, it was 282, but we’ll round down.) Among them were tiny tragedies, tiny comedies, and tiny political satires; there were tiny births and deaths and tiny sex. (And regrettably, tiny failures at following directions, as we received at least a dozen 280-word stories.) We hadn’t known it was possible to pack so much drama into 280 characters, but in accordance with our theme—“the story must be about something getting magically, randomly, inexplicably, or mysteriously bigger, longer, or just… more”—these snippets of fiction seemed to expand to contain something bigger than themselves.
Out of 280 entries, the Electric Literature editors chose five winners, and New Yorker writer and cartoonist Sara Lautman illustrated them. We still hate the 280-character tweets, but with these five writers, at least we know they’re in good hands. {read}