Then a day came when carrying brevity one step further, I tried my hand at….. (Contd from here)

…..six word stories.

Who has not heard of the famous six word story credited to Earnest Hemingway?

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Wow! What a lot that says. Brevity at its very best, next only to the grunts or monosyllables at the breakfast table from men hidden behind newspapers mysteriously expressing through it, their need for more coffee/ toast and ably interpreted by their hapless wives. To be fair, the L & M does not fall into this category. For one I am running around making dosas and getting it to the dining table that it doesn’t really matter if he hides behind a newspaper or not. But the other more important reason is that the newspaper does not reach our house until after breakfast is over.

Ahem… I can sense it. The notorious digression has just happened even before the blog could stretch its feet. Isn’t it?? Getting away from the distraction of newspapers and breakfasts and back to those amazing six words with hidden potential to tell not one but n number of different possible stories, what else can I say but another simple, ‘Wow!’?

Yep, brevity awes me for the way it lets your own imagination run wild by leaving so much unsaid. I remember being totally impressed when I first came across this six word-er by Hemingway. As the un-anointed Long Blog Queen that I had been declared, there never was any question in my mind about my own ability to come up with anything this short. It just did not exist.

So when Preeti Shenoy’s six-word story competition on Facebook came up I read the updates about it and never gave it a second thought. But Hrishi sent me a message: Aren’t you taking part? Hmm… Little brothers cannot be disappointed by older sisters, even if they be ones acquired while on your blog journey. One has heard of brothers who throw tantrums and get one into trouble with parents and other elders, not that my own ever did anything such. Anyways, one simply has to live up to the expectation of brothers, real or blog ones. So, I decided to at least take a look at what was happening and hopped over to said page.

Plenty of entries were already in by then. Hmm…  The prize was also something tempting: an author signed copy of Preeti’s second book ‘Life is what you make of it’. I might as well try my hand, I thought. Yet.…. what could I possibly say in six words??! A fat lot of good being tempted by books would do if I couldn’t come up with something. And then it happened. Perhaps unbeknownst to me the 55 word stories and the quatrains had laid the foundation for six-word stories to be born. Out of the blue, just like that (as always) it arrived in style, shocking me pleasantly, my very own first six word story:

He loved her. She loved another.

I was pleased as punch. At least I had been able to come up with one. I lost no time in jotting it down for the competition. Surprise, surprise! More of them little ones decided to follow the first and reveal themselves to me. I did not like the rest of what I came up with, not as much the first one (which still remains my favorite), but, what the heck! One could enter as many as one liked, so I might as well jot all of them down,.. That is exactly what I did.

I am glad too that I did so, because it is not my favorite one that won the coveted author signed copy for me. It is this one:

Practiced hard. Won race. Lost life.

I found this site, Six Word Stories, a veritable paradise for micro fiction of this sort. The ingenuity of some of the writers leaves you speechless. It is quite an experience to find out just how much someone can say with so little. Tweets at twitter.com pale in comparison! Anyways, tweets use abbreviations and sms lingo. So it is not exactly within its 140 character limit. But six word stories are a challenge apart.

Here are a few others I have written. Tell me what you think. Please feel free to add more of yours.

I wasn’t drunk, but he was.

She worked hard. He drank harder.

She bared. He collected. Sordid tale.

Puppy licked. Kid smiled. Life-long friends.

Angry father. Distressed mother. Grades announced.

Discovered well-kept secrets. Had fight. Divorced.

Empty backyard. Open gates. Squealing tyres.

He waited. She waited. Erroneous conclusions. (Of course that was before the advent of cell phones)

He earned. She spent. Fitting mates.

Read diary entries. Gave tearful farewell.

Beautiful painting. Very cheap. Hungry artist.

He whistled. She smiled. Love story.

She served. He ruled. They existed.

Rainy day. Hot chai. Spicy love.

Defying parents lovers unite in mortuary.

Sling shot. Tinkling glass. Failed mission..

Hungry kid selling peanuts for peanuts.

Barking dog. Open window. Sleepless night.

Wet road. Speeding car. Untimely goodbyes.

Open albums. Black and white memories.

Lost child found by police, begging.

He clicked. She pirouetted. Careers zoomed.

Now that I have tried my hand at restricting my tales to just six words, I am left wondering what comes next. Three word stories?? (I love you) Two word? (Welcome home) May be just a solitary one.. a single word? (Goodbye) Or perhaps nothing at all, just silence? After all silence says a whole lot more than words, doesn’t it?