2025 Writing Micros with Urgency and Immediacy Generative Class
Taught by Tommy Dean
Register from November 01 to December 03, 2025
Writing Micros with Urgency and Immediacy
Thursday, December 04, 2025, 7-8:30 p.m. EDT 4-5:30 PM PDT
Join us for a 90-minute generative writing session focused on writing microfiction! Fractured Lit is excited to bring this class back to our submitters to help them write exciting and fresh micros they can enter into our yearly Micro Prize.
Editor in Chief Tommy Dean has developed an inspiring and welcoming class where participants can learn craft moves from excellent model texts and write to multifaceted writing prompts. Past students have published stories inspired by Tommy’s prompts in today’s best flash fiction literary magazines.
Microfiction demands that the writer (re)consider every word, every craft move, and every design decision. Writing these stories is a challenge, but a fun one! In this class, we’ll focus on stretching our use of writing elements and craft moves to imbue our microfiction with electricity and resonance.
Need a jump-start to your writing, want to try writing with extreme brevity, or just want to spend some time writing?
We hope you’ll come write with us, so we’re offering this class for the low price of $20 per student! All interested are welcome, regardless of experience.
Raffle Opportunity!
For an additional $5, participants can sign up for a raffle, with winners selected in early December.
- One lucky winner will receive an editorial feedback voucher for a future submission, with feedback provided by EIC Tommy Dean.
- Other prizes include a copy of Micro Contest Judge Steve Almond’s All the Secrets of the World or his essay collection Bad Stories. (3 winners for each book).
Instructor: Tommy Dean
7 Quick thoughts about Writing Micros
- Even micros need a sense of character, setting, and conflict. Even the weird, the surreal has to take place somewhere, have a driving force, and push toward resonance.
- Point of View: Where’s the camera? Who’s telling the story? What distance in time from the events of the story?
- Micros are grounded in looking at things in new ways, a combination of story and metaphor. Everything has a sense of being more significant than the face value. Don’t be afraid to state a truth, specifically and boldly.
- Embrace Mystery: How much can you leave out? How can you intrigue the reader with clues, details without leaving them cold or confused?
- Story Elements: Use as many or as few as you can get away with to contain the story, stakes, and meaning. How much exposition do you really need? Cut vigorously! Do we need a falling action or even a typical resolution?
- Dichotomies create tension for both the writer and the reader. What pairs of opposites fit in the world of your story?
- End with resonance: There should be stakes for both character and reader! Zoom in, zoom out, whisper, scream, duck a punch, give an uppercut, sound the alarm internally or for the whole world.
Tommy Dean is an associate literary agent with Rosecliff Literary, the author of two flash fiction chapbooks, Special Like the People on TV (Redbird Chapbooks, 2014) and Covenants (ELJ Editions, 2021), and a full flash collection, Hollows (Alternating Current Press, 2022). He lives in Indiana, where he is currently the editor of Fractured Lit and Uncharted Magazine. A recipient of the 2019 Lascaux Prize in Short Fiction, his writing can be found in Best Microfiction 2019, 2020, 2023, and Best Small Fiction 2019 and 2022. His work has been published in Monkeybicycle, Laurel Review, Moon City Review, Pithead Chapel, Harpur Palate, and many other litmags. He has taught writing workshops for the Gotham Writers Workshop, The Writers Center, and The Writers Workshop. Find him at tommydeanwriter.com and on Twitter @TommyDeanWriter.
The deadline to register is December 03, 2025. The class will take place on Thursday, December 4, 2025 at 7-8:30 p.m. EDT 4-5:30 PM PDT
Class Takeaways
By the end of this generative workshop, you’ll have gained:
- Knowledge of or new insight on microfiction-specific craft moves you can use in your writing.
- A new reading list of microfiction examples. Plus, in-depth analysis of the craft moves that lead to excellent short-short stories.
- Four to five new prompts to inspire you to create solid beginnings or endings. Students will also be given a PDF copy of the slides, including the prompts, so they can use them in the future.
- Dedicated writing time in an inclusive community of writers where you can feel welcomed and comfortable sharing your work and ideas.