Flash fiction: what we can learn from the six-word story

Somewhere in urban legend lives the tale of the six-word story – an event attributed, probably erroneously, to the American writer Ernest Hemingway.

Nevertheless, the story exists, and it’s a good one – helpful, if not true. So here it is. 

Hemingway bet ten dollars to his writer friends that he could write a powerful story in just six words. They all said it couldn’t be done. Hemingway scribbled six words on a napkin and passed it around the group. On the napkin he had written: 

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Needless to say, he won the bet. 

This method of telling a story in very few words was later dubbed flash fiction, and would inspire the Six-Word Memoirs project.

Whether the story is true or not, the impact of the six words is profound. They provoke a strong emotional response – and it’s the gaps around the words in particular, deliberately left by the author, that do much of the heavy lifting here. The story relies almost entirely on the reader’s imagination to fill in the blanks, giving us just enough information to create a connection but no more. This is, in part, what makes the story so satisfying – our brains are designed to make connections and complete narratives to make sense of the world.  Once the imagination takes over, the reader has already moved from a passive to an active participant in completing the story – the emotional resonance of the story comes from within the reader, rather described by the author, and so the impact is all the greater.  

If we were to break it down structurally there are some pretty cool things to be learned from those six words. Hemingway’s fragment of the narrative has a very clean structure. It begins with a hook, or a set-up: For Sale. Then comes the subject of the story, its focus: baby shoes. And finally, the emotional payoff with the twist: never worn. 

The simplicity of the idea and its uncomplicated structure, make the story even more impactful. There’s a clear arc for the reader to follow. And juxtaposing the tragedy of the story with the mundanity of its medium - an advert – makes the reveal all the more potent. 

What’s even more impressive is that Hemingway is able to lay the context for the story and illicit an enormous emotional response without describing any feelings. It feels truthful because it models human behaviour – we only usually see the visible events, rather than what lies beneath. It’s a great challenge for us writers – how do we create an emotional response in our audience without telling them what to think or feel? 

What would your six-word story be? For inspiration, here are a few more from some well-known writers:

Found true love. Married someone else. Dave Eggers

Served the pie, watched him die. Maggie O’Farrell

Lovely spring weather, bubonic plague raging. Evelyn Waugh

It cost too much, staying human. Bruce Sterling