Saturday 30 June 2012

Keep it under 100 words



Chuck Wendig’s flash fiction challenge this week was to write a story in three sentences and 100 words. Like all stories, it needs a beginning, a middle and an end.

I thought Hemingway won that one with his brevity. According to legend, he won a bet with a six word story.

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Even snopes.com can’t work that one out. They think it encapsulates his writing style and it definitely appeared in a play about him. But it is unconfirmed. Pity. It’s too clever and so thought provoking.

But, in any case, here are my less than one hundred word efforts. I wrote two and then chose to enter the second one. The happy ending seemed less ‘real’, sadly.

They met, on an intersection during a summer storm when her skirt blew up and in frantically pushing it down; she walked straight into him and spilt his coffee all over his crisp, white shirt. They connected, at an apology lunch because lunches were safer, that ended with them tumbling into bed in a passionate afternoon of lovemaking. They continued, through arguments, childbirth, and the unexpected issues that life throws at you, until together as always, they went gently into that long good night. 
84 words

OR

They met, on an intersection during a summer storm when her skirt blew up and in frantically pushing it down; she walked straight into him and spilt his coffee all over his crisp, white shirt. They connected, at an apology lunch because lunches were safer, that ended with them tumbling into bed in a passionate afternoon of lovemaking. They shattered, separated by lawyers and barristers and walls that they didn’t remember building.
72 words

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