Very Short Stories

I've never been much of a fan of the writing of Ernest Hemingway. The Old Man and the Sea could have, in my opinion, been summed up in about 10 pages. The Sun Also Rises was clearly full of bullfighting symbolism -- none of which I understood. And I think the only reason I am not completely repulsed by A Farewell to Arms is because I'm rather fond of a "Why did the chicken cross the road?" joke that pokes fun at it (answer: "To die. In the rain."). Hemingway just doesn't do it for me.

But I discovered something this weekend that may have redeemed him (slightly) in my book. Apparently, according to The Internet, Hemingway was once challenged to write a short story, replete with all required story elements, in as few words as possible. This is what he came up with:

"For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn."

This, my friends, is six words of sheer brilliance. Of course, every time I read this six-word story, I get choked up. But maybe that's a sign of its genius. I don't know -- I'm not a literary critic by any means, and can't fully explain why this story is so good. But I can recognize that, wow: this is amazing!

I've long been a fan of short-short stories. I like to read them and I like to write them. When I was at BYU I saw one day, among the trillions of fliers adorning the hallway walls of the JKHB, an advertisement for an English department sponsored Short Short Story Contest. To enter, all you had to do was write a story, making sure to include all story elements, on one or both sides of a 3.5-inch index card. I took up the challenge and entered a 100-word story I called "Paper Snowflakes":

They were making paper snowflakes to decorate the classroom for Christmas. “I want this room covered in snow,” Mrs. Peterson said.

So they set to work with white paper, red paper, green paper, and scissors. They sat four to a table. Angie made beautifully symmetrical snowflakes, but Josh’s didn’t look like snowflakes at all.

“Here, Josh, let me show you how it’s done,” said Angie.

Ignoring Angie, Josh continued to cut his into strangely shaped bits of paper.

“It’s really not that hard,” said Angie.

“I don’t care,” said Josh. He hung them up anyway.

They looked very festive indeed.

To my surprise, I won 3rd place -- and a $10 gift card to Barnes and Noble.

Since then, I've dabbled now and again in this short-short story writing (which is also called "flash fiction," or stories up to 2000 words, and "drabble," or stories that are exactly 100 words). Part of me wants to try my hand at this short-short story writing again. I enjoy this style because it's both simple and challenging to write. It's intensely satisfying to me to feel that surge of energy as I spit out, as succinctly as possible, a complete story. And it's a nice, little writing exercise that can be done with even only a small amount of time. The trouble that I tend to come across is that most of what I come up with seems very insignificant because it really has no point. So maybe someday I'll come up with something profound like Ernest Hemingway did. But in the meantime, I guess I'll just stick with my stories on mundane topics like making paper snowflakes.