Six little words

I've returned this evening from a five-day "knowledge booster course" intended to prepare me for the year-long Secondary English PGCE I will start in just over a week. My head is swimming with grammar, creative writing and children's literature, and no doubt I will share much of that in the next few days (maybe even here). But for now there's one thing I got from the course that I wanted to share as soon as I received it.

One exercise on the course involved us writing a narrative of a hundred words on anything in twenty minutes. We later returned to the narrative to edit and refine it, and one thing that was emphasised was the removal of unnecessary words to add impact to our writing. The course leader then posed these questions: could we reduce our story down to one sentence, losing as little of the meaning as possible? Could we reduce it to six words?

This led from something Ernest Hemingway was challenged to do - write a six word story. Many other writers have also attempted it. I'll tell you Hemingway's at the end, as I believe it's by far the most powerful, but first, here are all the other six word stories I was given this week:

"Forgive me!" "What for?" "Never mind." - John Updike

Eyeballed me, killed him. Slight exaggeration. - Irvine Welsh

Satan, Jehovah, fifteen rounds. A draw. - Norman Mailer

"Welcome to Moeshe Christiansen's Bar Mitzvah." - Andrea Seigel

Grass, cow, calf, milk, cheese, France. - Rick Moody

He remembered something that never happened. - A. M. Holmes

Saigon hotel. Decades later. He weeps. - Robert Olen Butler

"I love you..." "Love ya back" - Courtney Eldridge

She gave. He took. He forgot. - Tobias Woolf

You are not shit. You are! - 'Memoir', Jerry Stahl

All her life: half a house. - Jamie O'Neill

Poison; meditation; skiing; ants -- nothing worked. - Edward Albee

My nemesis is dead. Now what? - Michael Cunningham

I saw. I conquered. Couldn't come. - David Lodge

"Cyanide? Bitter almonds." He knew. How? - Brian Bouldrey

Father died. Mother triumphed. I left. - Mary Gaitskill

"You? Her? No dice, fat boy." - Pinckney Benedict

Oh, that? It's nothing. Not contagious. - Augusten Burroughs

Mother's Day came, doubling Oedipus' pleasure. - Bruce Benderson

Tossed remorselessly, whiffle balls sure hurt. - J. T. LeRoy

As she fell, her mind wandered. - Rebecca Miller

It's negative. Say hi to Mom. - Ben Greenman

Horny professor. Failing coed. No tenure. - 'A short history of academia' by Sue Grafton

Shiva destroys Earth. "Well, that's that." - A. G. Pasquella

Havana's no place for hockey, coach. - Nicholas Weinstock

As you can probably see, the point of the exercise is not necessarily what is said, but what is left out and inferred by the reader. On the whole, incredibly clever. Here's Hemingways:

For sale: baby shoes, never used.