Challenge: Simplicity and Depth (Corrected)

Note: The corrected text is listed below in bold in the crane wife story.

As an avid chessplayer, I have to admit that sometimes the most beautiful creations in chess come from the most unexpected, quietest and simplest moves. That's their charm - impressive depth and power with little raw material. Recognizing them as such requires a skill all it's own.

Over the last month I have seen a small outpouring of people writing extremely short stories that still attempt to be a viable tale. The universe of possibilities that some of the stories open up with a handful of words distinctly reminds me of the subtle nature of "the quiet move" in chess.

Here are three examples I came across:
The first is an old Japanese tale called the crane wife. An old man once found a wounded crane on his doorstep. He took the crane in and nursed it back to health. Some time later the man met a woman and fell in love and married. They were poor so the woman offered to weave silk clothing to sell to make money, but he could never look in at her while she created the clothes. As time grew on, the womans health worsened but blinded by greed, the man demanded more clothing to be weaved. Wanting badly to know what she did to the silk to make these clothes so desirable, he looked in on her one day and was surprised to see a crane plucking feathers from her own body to weave into the loom. She flew away and never returned.

(If you like the story, listen to the Decemberists sing a folk rock version of this song called Crane Wife 3).

So six sentences and I count at least five morals to the story. That's amazing. The story is also closed and complete and emotionally provocative. In fact your gender will probably seriously color how you feel about the story. Compassion, love, greed, selflessness, betrayal, tragedy, shame, sorrow maybe? - WOW! Talk about dynamite in small packages...

Contrast that with this story supposedly written by Hemingway (who according the story also said it was his best work). "For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn."

The difference here is how many stories he just wrote (in just 6 words!). Every time you try to figure out what happened, you get another story. Did the mother die? Of what did she die? Sickness, accident, homicide? Maybe a miscarriage or tragedy at birth? Maybe she just left or gave the child up for adoption? Maybe I just moved into a house and found some brand spanking new baby shoes. Heck, maybe I just got two for one at the local Walmart. The point is that it's an infinite number of stories out of an ever so tiny number of words.

Here's one more from the annals of the internet supposedly written in a college class in response to an assignment to write a short story involving religion, mystery and tradgedy.

"God, I'm pregnant. Who's the father?" So this one doesn't come close to either of the other two because it's both closed and narrowly focused. It's still part of the class of short stories written in 6 words or less.

So challenge time. What's your 6 word story? If you can't think of one, then whats your 6 sentence story? Here's my quick try at one. Missing my love, people surround me.

Ross Hytnen