Miniver Cheevy

Stories this short work well in SF, and to a certain degree in fantasy, because these are literary modes in which a story can succeed just by conveying a single strong idea or image, so getting to that point quickly and economically can be a virtue.

I'm fond of that kind of punchiness. On this blog I've linked Michael Swanwick's Periodic Table of Science Fiction collection, and quoted Neil Gaiman's hundred word gem about a familiar figure from myth. When I was a teenager, I memorized Larry Niven's “Unfinished Story #2:”

There were some things Man was not meant to know.

Still, Niven's story is nine words long ... and really, you should count the title, making it a total of twelve words.

Wired magazine challenged a bunch of SF and fantasy writers to do it in six. They got interesting results. Some of 'em read like headlines, some of them play with the form itself, and a few of them read very naturally.

What's most striking is that, if you know the writers, you can still hear their voice in a six word story. (And, while I'm on the subject, this is one of the genius things about the documentary The Aristocrats. Since all of the comedians were telling variations in the same joke, you would see vividly what it was that made each comedian's voice their own.)

Labels: storytelling