As I lay here in this alpaca-wool hammock, a question comes to mind: “What is the shortest possible length a story can be?” Could a single short sentence be considered a story? What are the essential elements of a successful story?
Possible characteristics of a successful story
- Activation of the imagination
- Emotional connection to the narrative
- Creation of feelings of…
- anticipation
- excitement
- happiness
- sorrow?
Hmm. What’s the shortest possible story that could accomplish these things? could a single sentence tell a whole story? Let’s give it a try. I’ll try to get the emotional connection and activation of the imagination as well as happiness and sorrow into a few sentences.
“The surgeon said she won’t be coming home.”
That one hits me right in the feels. Let’s see if we can make it better. I’ll add another character.
He clenched his teeth as the surgeon said,
“I’m sorry, sir. She didn’t make it.”
Expanding to longer forms
If a single sentence could be written that tells a story, could not single-sentence stories (with persistent characters) become the outline or framework for something longer? Maybe something like this?
- What is the message of the story?
- How could this be communicated through a narrative?
- How could the narrative be divided up into smaller, related, chapters?
- What single-sentence stories represent the chapters?
- What title would succinctly describe the narrative?
(as an aside, I think good chapters end with their title reference. Kind of like in music, where you keep the momentum going with the downbeat of the next measure as the destination, write chapters with the title as the destination.