Tuesday 17 January 2012

A story in ten words

Ernest Hemingway famously demonstrated that a story could be written in six words with this:
For sale: baby shoes, never worn.
Okay, so you don't learn exactly why the baby shoes were never worn, but you get enough - the story works.

When I heard that last year's Arts Council-funded National Short Story Day (it was December 22nd - shortest day of the year, see?) was running a competition via Twitter to write a short story in ten words, I thought I'd have a go. I gave it a lot of thought actually - like Hemingway's, my ten words needn't tell the full story but they would have to tell enough for the reader to get something out of it... hmm.

On the 22nd, my Twitter timeline was littered with entries with the #StoryIn10Words hashtag. So many, in fact, that when I found out this week that my entry had been chosen as one of the five winners, I was suitably chuffed. Here's my entry:
She pretended to be asleep when he came to bed.
What do you think? I'd love to hear how other people interpret this, why they think she is pretending to be asleep.

1 comment:

  1. Congratulations. And yeah, like Hemingway's, that paints a real picture and gets you asking all the right questions - which is what storytelling is all about.

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