by William Martin

This article originally appeared in the August, 1944 issue of Writer's Digest. Extensive research uncovered no evidence of copyright renewal.

"Editor Blank is eager to buy good short-short stories of 1,000-1,500 words—rates high." I came to resent such reoccurring statements in the Market Letter of my "Writer's Digest". Usually Editor Blank, eager as he was, has just turned down a good short-short of mine a few days before, or if he hadn't, I know from long and painful experience that he would turn one down before I studied next month's market news.

In resentment I did some pretty fancy, one-theme rationalizing: Editor Blank, the dirty rat, didn't know what a good short-short was. After months of this foolishness (which didn't seem to teach Editor Blank very much) I finally got around to reading and analyzing a knee-high batch of short-shorts. I soon had to admit, in fairness, that it was I who didn't know what a good short-short was. In fact, I didn't know what a short-short was. I had never written one. My five and six page efforts that Editor Blank had always sent so regularly back to Me hadn't been short-short stories at all.

If you're having short-short troubles, and will lend me an open mind, I am reasonably sure that I can explain once and for all: (1) what a short-short story actually is; (2) the kinds of material you ought to pick out for short-short stories; (3) how, in general, you should go about writing up this material.

What a short-short is not.

First off, let's see what a short-short is not. Through repeated rejection slips, an some very bitter eat-crow study, I am certain that a short-short is none of the following: (A) It is NOT an anecdote—a bright sketchy little tale (usually padded out through 1,500 words) about something or other that happened unexpectedly one afternoon to a guy named Joe. (B) It is NOT an account of people and events about which you intentionally confuse the reader from the first paragraph on down to the last paragraph so that you can then make everything crystal clear with a surprise ending. © It is NOT a normal length 4,000-word short story told briefly in 1,500 words.

What is it?

All right, then, what is a short-short story? Here goes, and remember, please, an open mind. A short-short Story is a short short story, nothing more, nothing less. That may seem obvious as all hell. It is. In fact it is so obvious that many writers don't bother to think about it at all. They think: short-short—the TWIST is the thing! If they can just get a least-of-all expected twist, to hell with the words that go before. This attitude could not be more harmful. A short-short is a short Story all the way from the first line on down to and including the last line. It has a beginning and a middle and an end, and all are equally important. It has accurate characterization; suspense, pace, and interest, It has, sometimes, a big surprise sending for the writer mainly interested in the twist, in that _it has no twist at all at the end_—only a normal story ending. More about that later.

A short story

Let's look briefly at a short story, and then see in what ways, through the careful selection of material, and special treatment, it can satisfactorily be written in a shorter way, and thus becomes a legitimate short short story.

There are many definitions of the short story. For our thinking here let's say that a short story is an illusion of reality that a writer creates on paper with the use of words. His materials are people, ideas. Usually he has about 4,000 words with which to create his illusion. Now a short-short story is pretty much the same thing as a short story. It, too, is an illusion of reality which a writer creates on paper with the use of words. His materials, too, are people, things, places, etc. But here the similarity stops. One obvious difference is that a short-short writer must create his illusion with 1,500 words, about a third as many as are allowed the short story writer. Now this doesn't mean that he can take a short story, whack out two words ous of three and, pronto, have himself a short-short. Far from that. An economically written short story would be pretty bald, wouldn't it, with two thirds of it cut out? A bald short story, we've seen, is NOT a short-short. The short-short writer's problem is not in trying to make one word do for three, but in selecting the sharply particular kinds of people, places, things, and ideas that can adequately be told about in 1,500 words. What are they? We'll take an example and see.

Let's pretend that this is 1935. The Nazis are just coming into prominence. We don't know much about them yet, we don't foresee their villainy. I've just read in a small circulation aviation magazine an interesting article about the dive bomber the Nazis are manufacturing and experimenting with. I say, oh boy, that's new and interesting, I'll make up a short short about a dive bomber and sell it to Collier's.

Now my job as a writer would be to tell Collier's 3,000,000 readers (the majority of whom, back in 1935, had never even heard of a dive bomber) exactly what a dive bomber was like. I'd have to create an illusion of reality about that dive bomber, and I'd have to start from scratch: I'd have to describe it in some detail, tell how it dove at its target, explain how it swung up after its dive. To do a thoroughly professional job of it I'd have to explain to the reader that this dive bomber didn't appear out of thin air, it was manufactured by the new Nazi party in Germany and then because nobody knew much about the Nazis, I'd have to go into detail about the Nazis. And all this before I had even started to write the story! But how easy it would be new to write about a dive bomber, and the Nazis. Everybody knows about dive bombers and Nazis now. All I'd have to write now would be… The dive bombers winged across the channel at dawn… and then, bang, I could get into the story.

Principles of selection

In order to get material that can be told about with the few words that you're allotted in a short short, pick out material that the reader already knows about. You won't have to go to great length to create an illusion of reality about this material because to the reader the material is already real, he brings an almost automatic reality response to your material the minute you mention it.

Here is an example that appeared in a magazine. Last year when the British were being steadily beaten back toward Cairo 1 sold a short-short story to Liberty about the British fighting on the desert.

For weeks the newspapers had been full of stories about desert warfare, about the retreat of the British, about the operations of British Commandos who were delaying the advance of the Germans. Readers knew about and were familiar with desert warfare, desert terrain, and so I had an easy time creating an illusion of the desert and the battle. Please note the economy I was able to achieve not by skillful brevity but by selecting material that I didn't have to go into great detail about. "The noontime desert swelled with shimmering heat lines as though hell were seeping up and burning itself out in tiny flames over the endless sands." Now that is just one sentence, fellow writer, and I can not get on with the story. "But on the horizon, miles to the north, a more concentrated fire had been burning all morning—the fire exploded in the night by the British Commandos in the newly established oil depots of the advancing Germans…" Please note that I don't have to go into detail about how the Commandos operate at night. I could save precious words here. The READER ALREADY KNEW HOW COMMANDOS OPERATE AT NIGHT.

So principle one again for selecting short-short story material is simply this: pick reader is familiar with. Familiar setting, familiar situations, familiar characters. In a short-short you haven't got time to explain other unfamiliar material, or complex material. Suppose, for example, that I had been foolish enough to have written the short short about the dive bomber back in 1935 and had selected for a hero then a young Nazi pilot. I would have had to have gone into some detail to explain a Nazi, even then. By the time I had explained an unfamiliar plane, an unfamiliar political dogma and an unfamiliar, complex neurotic zealot pilot I would have had few words left for the story.

So far we have talked about picking familiar settings, people, and things to write about in short-shorts. But how about familiar ideas? Can a writer take an unfamiliar idea and write it up fully and convincingly enough with only 1,200 words, a part of which he must give to descriptions and so on?

It can be done—if the idea isn't OPPOSED at the present time by reverse happenings in reality that the reader knows about. Let's take an example. The story about the British fighting on the desert. Now the British are NOT fighting on the desert now, they are not retreating now, the Germans are not advancing now. Everybody knows these factors, including the editor. I believe that if I had just finished writing the story about the British on the desert and my agent were trying to sell it at this time, he couldn't, not because it isn't an adequate story, and a pretty good illusion, but because it would be difficult to convince a reader in 1,200 words that the British are now taking a beating. He knows that they are not. He knows that Rommel has been kicked out of Africa. The story has lost its timeliness. See for yourself.

"And now smoke was beginning to drift over the British lines, over the sweat-dripping exhausted men, prone in their shallow trenches; over the headquarters tent where the Colonel studied his table map… he studied reports and then, with red pins marked the lines of the German advance. The red pins made a capital C like a claw. He stuck a green pin in the center of the claw, marking his position. By nightfall when the desert quieted to vague shadows, he knew that the C would spread to an O with the green pin in the center." All right, in my opinion (I can't tell your reaction at the moment) when the reader comes across the part about the British being encircled he'll stop and say what is this? The Germans haven't got anybody encircled, the Russians have got them encircled. When a reader stops like that your illusion of the story is over, and so far as his actual interest is concerned that is over, too. He no longer agrees with you. You're offering him a few words of evidence that the British are encircled, and he has thousands of words of daily evidence in the newspapers that they are not. So principle two in selecting material for short-shorts is this: Don't attempt to offer the reader an idea that you can't prove. And remember you can prove very little of anything in 1,200 words. This applies too to social manners and customs. The readers ideas are already formed about people and things, generally, long before he holds your short short before his nose.

Treatment of Material

Suppose you have selected some good short material—something that the reader already knows about, and can believe in, how do you go about writing it up? The first thing I'd suggest that you do is to forget about that damn twist at the end, and settle down to analyzing your material. Treatment is an individual writing problem, but here are two tricks on economy of presentation that I have learned.

(1) Though this may seem impossible off hand, you can make a single word take the place of an entire scene. Here is an example from a short-short of mine which appeared in Collier's. I started the story with a man standing in the anteroom of an office. He was shabbily dressed. He wanted to get in to see the boss. I wanted to characterize him as being patiently persistent. I could have done this by having him go through two scenes asking to get in. I was able to use one scene, and with the use of a single word in this scene imply a foregoing scene in which the man's persistent conversation was the same. The word is again. Here's the beginning, "John Brent's secretary was certain that her boss wouldn't want to see anyone this morning. But the tall, nervous man outside the railing was patiently persistent. "But what did you want to see Mr. Brent about," she parried AGAIN. "It's a personal matter," the man explained A SECOND TIME.

See? I saved at least 50 words, and I needed them very badly later on. I didn't know as much then as I do now and one place in the story needed a lot of explaining.

(2) The use of the word HAD is frequently a saver. It helps to create a general illusion that your story is real by implying that it has been going on for sometime. An example from another Collier's short-short. "She had answered him readily because his question seemed so remote from their happiness—the first happiness in love she had ever known." This is the first line of the story. It continues, "Lying there on the warm sand with her cheek close to his elbow, she had been thinking how inadequate were all the old catch words of love to explain how she felt about him. It would take more than words, always. Then had come his abrupt question which at first scarcely stirred her from her dreaming." Now the story goes right ahead; though the man has asked only one question, a great deal seems to have happened, and the reader is propelled into the story. The springboard is one word—had. Also please note the economy that a beach setting lends. I don't have to describe it, I don't have to explain why they've come to the beach. The reader knows you go to a beach to lounge around and swim. I just say "lying there on the warm sand." Do you see how you can make the reader do most of the work of filling in the general picture for you, leaving you with words enough for factors in the story that you want to develop and emphasize.

This may seem arbitrary, but in my opinion there is no twist at the end of a short-short story. I admit that there seems to be one. But consider a moment. In a good short story you never know exactly how it will end, do you, until the writer puts the ending on? If the writer has done his job expertly throughout the story you can't know. He has kept you so interested moment for moment, held your attention line by line so sharply, that you haven't had a chance to think ahead and foresee the exact ending. You may feel that the story is going to end all right, but you don't know exactly how. You have to read on until the end to find out. Now in a short-short, if the writer has done his job well, he holds you in his illusion, and keeps you there so that you don't think ahead. When you do read the last line or so in a short-short and the story is ended, you may have a sense of a twist, but the twist is not there. You have merely read the last part of the story last, one or two lines that complete the pattern. All along the writer has been offering you evidence that you believe about material that you already know about, and the one or so lines at the ending are merely confirmations of the whole. Usually the one line or so contains a motive that you instantly see was there all the time. You already knew it was there. You just have been reading other thoughts until the end.

I hope that you'll get around to reading some short-shorts and checking what you read with what we've talked about. I believe that you'll find a short-short nothing but a short-short story. You'll find the materials familiar—the settings laid in rooms, offices, at the beach—the characters like people you know and see every day, the ideas ones that you already know about and believe in. Get busy at your typewriter and good luck. Editor Blank is actually eager to buy good short-shorts this month or any month.