Wednesday, March 17, 2010

A story in how many words?

I got chatting to a fellow author on Saturday who said he'd been trying his hand at a new challenge - flash fiction that's only six words long!

It seems almost impossible to tell a story in only six words, but he explained that if you got it right, it could be very effective, especially in comedy work.

Never one to turn down a writing-related challenge I decided to have a go. I'm used to writing flash and have managed stories of only 30 words before now, but six is something else again. And... I failed. At least for now. I managed one piece that was ten words long, which I'm actually rather proud of, but I couldn't have reduced it to six if it'd stared at it till Doomsday.

It was fun trying, though, and something to drag out and look at again in the future. I suspect it might be useful for prodding my brain into action when I've hit the latest brick wall.

And the ten word story? Well, I might be persuaded to post it on here in a week or two, if you're all very very nice to me.

2 comments:

Bill Kirton said...

You should look at a site run by a Dutch friend of mine - www.rammenas.nl.
It's for flash fiction but weekends she has tiny stories. Her first theme was love story and there are interesting approaches. I tried to write mine in as few words as possible. So far I have it down to 3 words. The title is Commitment and the story goes:

'I'm pregnant.'
'Goodbye.'

Fiona Glass said...

I'll have a look at that - it sounds fascinating.

And I love that story! I'm not sure my brain thinks in such short 'bites'...