The Soul of Wit
The art of the six-word story
The art of hilariously captioning a meme or writing the perfect pithy tweet or mastering the art of the hook and punchline—the goal of content creators everywhere, no doubt—all call for brevity. In other words, less is more. At the risk of redundancy, let me repeat that. Is more ever more? Short answer: no.
On average, online articles run 800 to 1000 words because the reading public clearly prefers the short-and-sweet. After all, life is short. Most articles now come with an approximate reading time so you’ll know just what you’re getting into. But less has always been, and continues to be, more. This is why style manuals stress concision and clarity. Why use ten sentences to say what you could say with one?
For online journalists and bloggers this is even more important. The careful wording of a title is the best way to make sure your article gets a click. This has led to the creation of so much “click bait”—the dreaded “fake news”—and the reason is that whether or not people read the article is irrelevant to advertising dollars. If they hook you for a click, they win.
For satirical news sites like Babylon Bee and The Onion, the headline is everything. Most of the article just fleshes out the title’s punchline, fluffs up the paragraph with newsy conventions like the quoting fake sources, citing of studies, etc. Here are a few favorites:
“Study Reveals: Babies are Stupid”
“New Dog Digs Up Old Dog”
“Your Kids: Are They Sexy Enough?”
“Kitten Thinks of Nothing but Murder all Day”
“Friends of Band Regret Going to Show”
“Study: Depression Hits Losers Hardest”
The 6-word story
“I came, I saw, I conquered.” This is perhaps the original six-word story. (Of course, in Latin it’s only three words—thought to be Julius Caesar’s report to the Roman senate following his successful military campaign.)
Stories, like sentences, have a beginning, middle and end. They tell a story in which something happens (noun + verb = effect). The less there are of them, the more they matter.
William Faulkner famously said that a novelist is a failed short story writer, and a short story writer is a failed poet. Well, you have to start failing somewhere if you’re ever going to learn to “fail better” as Beckett recommended. In other words, stories begin with sentences, so you ought to enjoy writing them.
No discussion of brevity would be complete without Hemingway, the writer who usually gets credited with creating the six-word story. Having combined equal parts poetry and drama, Hemingway whittled “story” down to its essence and came up with this little number, the first micro-fiction:
“For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.”
So there you have it—the subtle melancholy of the short, sweet, and complete.
Here are a few more:
“Longed for him. Got him. Shit.”—Margaret Atwood
“Without thinking, I made two cups.”—Alistair Daniel
“Revenge is living well, without you.”—Joyce Carol Oates
Prompt: Write a 6-word story, something that hints at character, longing and desire.