My Six-Word Short

Hemingway famously wrote a short in just six words, "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." It's an amazing piece of economy: the first two words place it in a context that tells you where the words appear, a newspaper classified, and additionally paints the image of how the unmentioned speaker is reading them --- you can focus the camera in close on the classified and then dolly back to see the character reading it, encouraging you to not only wonder about the character who wrote them but about the reaction of the character reading them; the next four words set up the aftermath of a tragedy.

Wired recently invited several dozen authors to take their six-word shot, so I decided to give it a try.


btw, I heard about Snowy. Condolences.


Being online, I decided to leverage the medium and add a link, but the link isn't necessary, as the first word does the job of setting the scene. You can see the words on the screen, which could be a computer monitor, blackberry or cell phone. The "btw" works both for email and for text messages, though I think the brevity suggests texting or IM. The mention of Snowy works as is, though it sounds like a dog or cat, but if the reader is really plugged in he will recognize the name as a woman who basically played WoW to death, prompting one of the largest online funerals.