[OneWingedShark]

No, I think it will encourage semi-literate, Hallmarkesque mush, and wannabe hipster bilge. Just yesterday I got a note from the son of a friend - out of the blue - asking me to evaluate “a novel in progress” and two short stories that he had been working on for a year and a half. The “novel” was two pages, the stories one page each. How clueless/delusional can someone be?
We are hurtling into a Dark Age.

Here's one for you: 500-word short story. Go.

Yes, this is an actual category, as is the 250-word short-story — the latter is surprisingly hard to do well.

[kabumpo]

I love short stories, but it’s not what I do.

[kabumpo]

Perhaps you missed my point. What my friend’s son sent me were not completed short works. They were the first page of forty, or four hundred.

[mdmathis6]

“as is the 250-word short-story — the latter is surprisingly hard to do well. “

Sort of like writing a Haiku based on a Shakesperean sonnet.

injured desolate
Lucrease cries out for vengeance
her rape damns them both...