Who Loves Short Shorts?

 We are pleased to offer this guest post by, Lila Bolme

I love short shorts.
No, I'm not talking about clothes, I'm talking about stories – like WNI's short, short story contest – "A Picture is Worth 500 Words".
But squeezing a story into a five hundred word manuscript is a little like shimmying into a pair of short shorts:

• You have to be bold
  
• You have to be lean
  
• You have to be careful how you move
  

It can also make you a better writer.
Last year, WNI offered a contest to write a short mystery, just six sentences long. That's about as short as you can get. I wondered if I could do it. I didn't plan to submit – but I did.
It turned out to be an incredible writing experience.
So how do writers go about writing something so short? Here's the process I went through to develop that contest entry. (My thoughts during the process are in italics.)

Put Both Feet In

I started with basic questions:

1. What does a story need, to make it a story?
   

A protagonist and a problem. An antagonist would be nice, but no sense setting the bar too high at the start.

2. Who is my protagonist?
   

A guy. Yup, I only had a picture in my head - a drunk in a trunk. I had just watched Water for Elephants.

3. What's the character's problem?
   

He's drunk.

Shimmy, Shimmy

4. But I need a mystery.
   

A drunk man is no mystery. How about a drunk woman?
Voila – I had a drunk woman.
Then I remembered some writing advice I read somewhere that said – throw your protagonist off a cliff.
So I did.
Presto! I had a drunk woman falling off a cliff.

5. How did she get there?
   

Kidnapped...Skiing...hmmm...OK, maybe she doesn't fall off a cliff, maybe she falls off a train...an elephant...her bed – Her bed (lots of giggling) Wait – To a drunk with bed spins, falling off a bed might seem like falling off a cliff.
Now I have a drunk woman falling off her bed.
That's not a mystery but...what if I don't tell the reader she's drunk till the end. Ta Da! Wait – Is that a mystery? I knew I should have looked that up. OK, what if I don't tell the reader she's drunk till the end AND I don't tell the reader it's a bed that she falls off of, until the end? – SHA-BAM!
That was my story kernel.

Work It

Time to get the story moving, but short, shorts only cover so much. I needed a plan.
Here's how I laid it out:

• Sentence 1 & 2 - Introduce the character and the problem.
  
• Sentence 3 & 4 - Make the problem huge and the character struggle .
  
• Sentence 5 & 6 - Let the character win or lose and reveal the mystery.
  

Squeezing into the story limits forced me to drop flab and muscle up my words. I started with my character already in crisis. The character struggled, then lost, revealing the mystery.
What I Learned:
Everything that I thought was a limitation, actually helped me write better.

• Each sentence had a specific job.
  
• The conflict had to be inflated immediately.
  
• Every word had to be deliberate.
  

I challenge you to enter this contest. Try some short shorts for yourself. Who knows? You might decide you love them too.
If you like, you can see how my Six-Sentence Mystery, turned out, right here on Writing North Idaho.

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