Repetition and variation as creative procedures in micro-storytelling

Abstract

The paper address, through several examples –some of them well known, others much less— how the tension between the familiar and the unknown, the repetition and the difference, are found in the genesis of some series of short-short stories. The entity of these texts as Works is definitively based on the other elements to which they are linked, in a kind of system. The aim is not just examining the intertextual resources (although they can also be read as exercises of variation and repetition), but rather collections or sets of micro-stories where authors experiment with the development of stories in the manner of musical composition: starting from the identical, they introduce alterations and observe how writing gives rise to a new path, a new universe.