Microfiction, prose poetry and poetry have a lot in common. Where they differ is not voice or description, it’s plot. Or at least a narrative arc of action and reaction, with some kind of resolution, a change.

Create a conflict for your character(s). Engage a voice. Show and tell the story in mini-scenes. Take the reader right into the heart of your character or narrator, and illuminate what it is to be human, or not, as the case may be.

American expatriate Carrie Etter has published four collections of poetry, most recently The Weather in Normal (UK: Seren; US: Station Hill, 2018), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. She has also published a critically acclaimed chapbook of flash fiction, Hometown (V. Press, 2016).

Her story, ‘Stephanie’, was named in the Best British and Irish Flash Fiction Awards, chosen as a finalist for Best of the Net, and nominated for the Pushcart Prizes, while her story ‘The Fog’ was nominated for Best Small Fictions. As David Gaffney remarks, “Etter’s stories climb into your head and reboot it from the inside, from the squealingly joyous to the darkly sad, some with gear changes that fling you backwards in your seat, some told in voices so strong you could lean against them, and then some fragile, as if the page held nothing but the faint impression of a delicate and long-dead insect. I can’t wait for more.”

Carrie is is a member of the Creative Writing faculty at the University of Bristol.

So, send Carrie your Microfiction. To be long listed (final 20) will be a peacock feather in your cap. To be shortlisted in the Top 10, may create a platform that literary agents will be interested in. To win, or place second or third, is a validation of your skills that might just get your work published in future.