Most of us bookish types will have heard the anecdote about Ernest Hemingway betting his friends that he could write a complete story in six words, and coming up with: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
I think it’s been proven beyond all doubt that this never actually happened; versions of this six-word story seem to date back to the early 1900s, when Hemingway himself would have only been a small child. Apparently, also, the story wasn’t even attributed to Hemingway until the 1990s, by which time he’d been dead for thirty years and was no longer around to confirm or refute anything.
I’ve been thinking about it again recently, and wondering how much shorter a short story can get while still feeling like it provides us with a complete narrative experience. The best five-word contender I can think of might be something you’d rule out on a technicality — it’s a line from a film, so not a strictly self-contained work in its own right, but I think it hints at a vast unspoken world of character and action, which feels like one of the hallmarks of a great narrative experience to me.
It’s from Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, itself adapted from a novelette by Philip K. Dick, and it’s the bit where Detective Anderton (Tom Cruise) has kidnapped the precognitive Agatha (Samantha Morton, who is AMAZING in this film in a very small part with very few lines) and is escaping through a shopping centre with her, hotly pursued by Anderton’s fellow agents from PreCrime. Anderton and Agatha bump into a woman in the mall, and Agatha suddenly grabs her and implores: “He knows! Don’t go home!”
This then got me thinking about a four-word contender, from a play this time, so probably also something you’d rule out on the same technicality. It’s from Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois recalling an episode from her past when she discovered her husband, Allan Grey, having sex with a mutual friend — a male mutual friend. All three of them try to pretend that nothing has happened, but later that evening, out on the dance floor while she and Allan are dancing the Varsouviana, Blanche cannot help but whisper into his ear: “I saw! I know!”, whereupon Allan rushes out and shoots himself in the head.
(Strictly speaking, Blanche’s full line is “I saw! I know! You disgust me!” which is seven words, but I’m not convinced the last three carry anything like the potency of the first four. You decide for yourself.)
Boiling the syrup down much further than this starts to get difficult. Using three words, two words or just one word makes clarity and fullness of meaning quite a bit trickier to achieve, but I think it’s doable. For a story to be this short, it has to rely heavily on what the reader (or audience) infers about context and about what has been left unsaid. It involves the reader (or audience) being called upon to do their share of the work.
I think writing a story at the extreme limit of ultra-economy requires us to fall back on the imperative form of a verb, something raw and simple used to striking, calculated, exclamatory effect.
“Go!” would be a perfect example, as would “Stop!”. In much the same vein, “Come!” has an intriguing, self-contained, allusive power, too — not least with its modern colloquial usage which is much less to do with movement towards a speaker and much more to do with orgasms and ejaculation — rich story fuel indeed.
“Come! Then go!” would certainly give us lots to imagine happening in a three-word story with no additional context or explanation…
