About 200

200 is a training project of mine: Write stories in 200 words. The aim is to teach myself more about the basic elements of story writing, and how to get the most out of every word I choose to use. When I only have 200 words, any word spent on being flowery is almost certainly cruft that I will have to cut on my second pass to bring the manuscript down to 200 words. (The word count is inherently imprecise. MS Word counts differently than Scrivener counts differently than WordPress. I’m currently using Google Docs, so I’m using its word counts.)

Not everything I write under 200 will be a story. Some will be ideas that I want to expand on, or vignettes. But I aim for more of them to be stories than not.

Or more concisely:

200 is a project to write 200-word stories to practice writing and concision. With only 200 words, any flowery word is cruft that I must cut. (I use Google Doc’s word count, but other programs give different totals.)

Not everything tagged 200 will be a story, but most. Others will be ideas or vignettes.