Ahem! Ahem! The Grammar Busters have arrived! More precisely, a reconnaissance force of one has arrived, at the invitation of your threadmaster, who may live to regret it!
Before I begin ransacking the joint, let me ask a few questions.
1) What exactly do you mean by a "short story of fifty words or less"? Is the form supposed to tell a story (concisely, of course), or encapsulate a mood, or what?
2) If it's designed to tell a story, then in my view only one of the examples Thomas forwarded to the Grammar Thread is fully successful -- the one about the Fishin' Fool & the Shark:
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It has a definite story to tell -- and a nice punch line.
2) Another nicely encapsulates a mood:
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But -- invidious question -- how does it differ from a short poem? It is even laid out on the page like free verse.
Other contributions seem like prose haikus -- but in 50 words rather than 17 syllables.
In this day and age of experimentation, it is silly to quibble over the literary distinctions between poems and stories, between stories and essays, etc., & etc.
But I assume that one of the things you are trying to do here is to subject yourselves to a strict discipline. So perhaps you might decide on what other requirements, in addition to the length requirement, are involved in that discipline.
3) Final comment. However you decide to define your short-short story (as tale, or as 50-word haiku, or as both, or whatever), some of the submissions here won't make the grade, because they cannot/do not stand alone. That is, they are like out-of-context fragments of some larger whole.
4) Piece of advice. Economize! Don't waste precious space on descriptive adjectives and adverbs, which don't add much anyway, and which often in fact detract from your piece because of their banality. Why must you munch "contentedly"? Just munch!
Okay, have I stepped on enough toes? I await your answer!
jbe
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