5 Words Or Less

I have been thinking today about how many words it takes to make a story.  Or rather, how few words you can use to make a story.  We often think that the longer a sentence is, the more descriptive detail we can include: the longer the better.  But how often do we lose impact and effect in our writing by waffling?  Just how easy is it to convey a tone, an emotion, a character in just a couple of words?

Ernest Hemingway famously claimed to be able to tell a story using just six words:

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Whilst there is no stereotypical ‘Beginning, Middle and End’, and it doesn’t describe the scene or develop the plot or characters, there is something desperately sad about those six words.  Something more moving than paragraphs spent building “realistic’ characters.  We aren’t given all of the details, but we fill them in for ourselves.   

And isn’t that part of what writing is all about?  Leaving gaps and spaces for the reader to fill with their own ideas and experiences?  Isn't all writing - seen by others - an invitation into a dialogue?

I challenged myself to use exactly five words to suggest a story.  Not to give all of the details, but to hint at something bigger and to leave the reader to tell the rest of the story themselves.  None of them come close to Hemingway's micro-story, but I had fun creating them and restricting myself to just five words (I'm not sure why I chose five words.  Probably because it's possible to count on one hand!)

The ocean was calm again.

No one heard her scream.

“It won’t hurt.”  He grinned.

They would never meet again.

He never received the letter.

Have a go and post your own 5 word (or less) sentences/micro-stories.

There are some interesting short story ideas at http://www.very-short-story.com/ (I follow him on Twitter too) and http://www.storybytes.com/.