The Two-Sentence Story. How short can you write?
The Two-Sentence Story. How short can you write?
As most of you know, I am a strong proponent of writing shorter for greater impact in today’s marketplace.
Shorter words.
Shorter sentences.
Shorter paragraphs.
Shorter chapters.
Shorter stories.
Shorter novels.
It’s not necessary to write 100,000 words when 60,000 words can tell the same story just as well and most times better.
Those who are more learned than I am have begun to realize the importance of shorter writing.
Scott Simon from NPR spoke at the Tucson Festival of Books and explained a lesson that his stepfather had taught him: If you take the shortest versions of the Hippocratic oath, the twenty-third psalm, the Lord’s Prayer, any Shakespeare sonnet, the preamble to the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, and the final paragraph of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” and add up the total words, they total less than 1,000.
What it reminds you, he pointed out, is how important short writing has been in human culture, over history, to say some of the most important and most enduring things.
I recently blogged about the six word story, using Earnest Hemingway’s famous and emotional piece. For Sale. Baby shoes. Never worn. It’s as sad as any story I’ve ever read.
Then I ran across writers who were tinkering with the two sentence story. The first was a horror story:
I begin tucking him into bed, and he tells me, “Daddy check for monster under my bed.”
I look underneath for his amusement and see him, another him, staring back at me, quivering and whispering, “Daddy, there’s somebody on my bed.”
Brilliant.
The second was a cross between horror and science fiction:
The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door.
It may not be the whole story, but it is a great beginning. I tried my hand at writing two sentence stories. Some may work. Some may not.
He looked deep into her eyes, kissed her gently, and whispered the wrong name. She wore pink to his funeral and black to her own.
“If I hit her, she would have to be the fastest little girl in the world,” Roy said, raising the rifle to his shoulder and pulling the trigger.
“Congratulations,” Don replied, “you have just killed the fastest little girl in the world.”
He wondered why the truck was growing larger and larger. Then it hit him.
He knew if he could just talk to her one more time, she would forgive him. He confessed and poured out his soul to her but she turned her back somewhere between the “I” and the “do.”
He thought his third wife would have the decency to hire a divorce attorney like his first two wives did, but she came to court alone and told the judge she didn’t want the house, the car, or the cash. She would be quite happy if she were only awarded his .32 caliber Beretta.
The second he saw her, he knew he was in love. The second she saw him, she knew she was a rich widow.
“I love you, Linda,” he said.
“My name is Laura,” she said.
She gave herself a five thousand dollar raise every time her boss made a sexual advance toward her. His wife would have never known about the affair if he hadn’t charged his secretary with embezzling.
He had never been afraid of the dark, he admitted.
“Then you won’t be afraid of where you’re going,” she whispered as she pulled the trigger.
It was the most moving eulogy he had ever heard at a funeral. Why did they keep using his name?
The creature staring back at him had three eyes, a long grizzled snout, and teeth that had been sharpened into fangs. What was the creature doing in his mirror?
I’ll love you till the day I die, he said, and his first wife believed him. The second made it possible
Go ahead. Let me see the best two-sentence story you can write.
Please click the book cover to read more about my books on Amazon. Secrets of the Dead is the shortest novel I’ve written, and I’m trying to make the new ones even shorter.