The Short-Short Story

The short-short story sits between flash fiction and the traditional story, roughly five hundred to two thousand words, and it is sometimes called sudden fiction. It is long enough to build a scene and hold a conversation, and short enough to be read in three minutes. Its demands are specific. Unlike flash, it can afford to show a room, a voice and an exchange; unlike a longer story, it cannot afford a subplot, and rarely more than two characters who matter. The most reliable shape is one complication and one decision, with the decision arriving late enough to be earned and the story stopping soon after it. Characteristic techniques - Two scenes at most, and often one, held inside a single setting. - A complication that arrives early and cannot be ignored. - One decision, made on the page rather than reported afterwards. - Dialogue carrying both the situation and the character, as it must when there is no room for anything else. - Compression in the transitions: a line break may carry an hour or a year. An original example, written for this platform Rent Day My brother arrived with a plastic bag and the news that he was staying. He put the bag down in the hall like a man who had already paid for the room, and he went straight to the window and opened it, because he has always believed that stale air is the first problem in any house. I had four weeks before the landlord came for the second half of the money, and I had a job that ended in June. "You can't," I said. He looked at the window, at the street, at the man on the corner selling phone cards, and he said nothing, which is his way of saying it has already been decided. So I put the kettle on, because there was nothing else to put on, and I asked him whether he could keep the rent if I kept the lights, and he said he could, and that was the whole agreement, made in a kitchen with a bag still standing in the hall. How the example works One setting, two characters, one complication stated plainly in the first paragraph, and one decision. The dialogue does the work of three paragraphs of explanation: his silence, and then the question that settles it. The ending is the decision itself rather than a summary of it, and nothing is explained about the years that led here. Practical guidance Write the complication in one sentence before you draft, then decide which character refuses and which one acts. Keep to one place if you can. Let the decision happen on the page, and end within a paragraph of it. Exercise to try Write a story of eight hundred words in one room with two people, in which the first sentence gives the complication and the last gives the decision. Allow yourself no flashback. Revision tips Check that the decision is made in the present tense of the story. Cut any dialogue that repeats what the narration has already said. Make sure both characters want something different. Finally, read the last two paragraphs: if either explains the decision, delete it and end on the act.