THE SHORTEST SHORT STORY EVER WROTE… ARGUABLY

February 8, 2011 22rants
Tags: creative writing, fiction, flash fiction, micro-fiction, short stories, short story, story

Having woke up early this morning (and I mean real early), I basically had too much time on my hands. Having read the famous six-word short story (supposedly by Ernest Hemingway) I made a point to come up with something even shorter. With near-sighted vision (20-25), and without wearing my glasses, I still managed to take a close read at the five important elements of a short story (characters, setting, plot, conflict, theme), and I’m pretty sure I covered them all. In just five words. Here it is:

In bed, struggling, he succumbs.

If this is not the shortest short story that would qualify as a short story I honestly don’t know what is. Personally, I’ve read links to “stories” with a word count of three or four words. But all of them seem to make no sense. So if that ain’t the world’s shortest short story, tell me what is.

Yours,
A.J. Chilson