Short Stories | 3 little birds

In October last year, I sat with my family in our living room to watch the Microflix 2020 Awards. My microfiction, ‘Hope is an Inanimate Object‘ was one of the 28 stories that had been adapted into a microfilm. The screening and awards event had to be a virtual one, because, well, 2020.

It was incredible watching the creative interpretations of the 28 microlits, each under 3 minutes long. When the film Screentime started rolling, I saw the words I had written brought to life, transported into a clever, animated world that turned my little idea into something amazing.

My mother in Malaysia and my sister in London were watching online too. My sister texted after we all watched Screentime, to say “The sound effects were good.”

And then it was time for the awards, and this happened:

Screentime was jointly awarded Best Sound, together with the beautifully eerie film Chatswood Ghost Story, based on a microlit written by Marie Dustmann.

I was thrilled to bits. Congratulations to the very clever team:

And so we come to 2021, and this year’s Microflix Festival is underway. I submitted two microlit pieces to the competition, and one of them has been selected by the Spineless Wonders team. Introducing: Quicksand.

Quicksand by Seetha Dodd

Excerpt of Quicksand – read the rest on the Microflix website

It’s up on the Microflix website, where filmmakers can select a text and turn it into a microfilm. If you get a chance to read Quicksand, let me know what you think. I’d love to hear your interpretation.

♥, Seetha

The call out was for submissions which play with genre. A mash-up, a reshape, a blend, a hybrid of form, genre and style. The award was co-hosted by Spineless Wonders and the Newcastle Writers Festival; selected pieces offered publication in the annual Spineless Wonders’ microlit anthology.

It’s been so exciting to be a finalist. My microlit is called ‘The Sisterhood Opens a Window of Opportunity‘ – an email to Snow White, heavy on the corporate jargon. Thank you Cassandra Atherton – editor of the anthology, Bronwyn Mehan – publisher at Spineless Wonders and Rosemarie Milsom – Festival director, for including my piece in this incredibly clever collection of microlit.

The launch of Pulped Fiction took place last week. True to the spirit of the times, it was online. But it certainly wasn’t just another Zoom call. We had a pop culture quiz, a cocktail making lesson, readings from the anthology, fancy dress, and presentation of the awards to the two winners of the National and Hunter categories (congratulations, Jane O’Sullivan and Deborah Van Heekeren!)

I loved watching the incredibly creative readings of these microlit pieces. We had been asked to send in a pre-recorded video, so there was plenty of room for imagination. To fit the theme of my story, my reading was a recorded PowerPoint slideshow (including SmartArt and Transitions because…process flow!) I also can’t resist a fancy dress party, so here is another spin on Pulped Fiction: Snow White & The Seven Deadly Sins.