NationStates Jolt Archive

I've recently stumbled across a lovely little genre of literature called flash fiction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_fiction). Basically, the author has to write a complete, compelling story in as few words as possible, typically less than a hundred.

Now, most would think this a frivolous exercise in constrained writing, but good authors can produce remarkably powerful stories in just a handful of words. Here are two examples:

First, a horror story by Fredric Brown:

"The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door..."

:eek:

Creepy. (And yes, since this was written in the 1940s, he meant "man" as in "human", not just "male". No naughty last-man-on-last-woman action here. :p )



And now, a mini-masterpiece by Ernest Hemingway. It's only six words long, but it packs an emotional whallop:

"For Sale: Baby shoes. Never Worn."

:(

Chew on that for awhile...

There's an entire directory of flash-fiction sites on this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_fiction) Wikipedia article. Anybody else find something they like?

How positive those two selected pieces are….

I don't get the second one.

I don't get the second one.

lets just say the baby grew out of them and leave it at that

I don't get the second one.
Its a dead baby joke.
Except that Hemingway was a drunken lunatic with no sense of humor, and so it isn't actually funny, and, hence, isn't a joke.
But there is, most certainly, a dead baby, because the only thing Hemingway liked more than the taste of buckshot was staging tragic moments in maternity wards.

snip
if you go though all those pages and find some more really short ones i'll tell you if i like them. most of them are too long. i have a very short attention span/boredom threshold. i like hemingway's, not so much a story, they have sentences in them, but powerful none-the-less.

if you go though all those pages and find some more really short ones i'll tell you if i like them. most of them are too long. i have a very short attention span/boredom threshold. i like hemingway's, not so much a story, they have sentences in them, but powerful none-the-less.

Hmm... you're right. I figured that all the stories in those directories would be a sentence or two each.

Well, after a bit of Googling, I found this site (http://tangents.co.uk/50words/); every story on it is fifty words or less. No Hemmingway, mind you, but pretty good anyways.