#747 Fleeing Complexity- Jon McGregor
The full title for this story is- Fleeing Complexity: Irby in the Marsh. The entire text of this story reads as:
“The fire spread quicker than the little bastard was expecting.”
That’s it. Far before the terms “flash fiction,” or “micro-narrative” were discussed writers wrote whatever their story required and didn’t worry about what to call the form. Surly this sized “story” can be called something other than a short story, right? I say a story is a story. I included this for this blog to illustrate that true craft is to create a story in the reader’s head by any means in the writer’s tool box.
There is much implied by this one sentence. Without realizing that your mind immediately fills in certain blanks, for certain you imagined Irby doing something about, near, or because of a giant fire. He was likely frantic or in serious trouble, and if he was near a marsh…etc. If we did this for one sentence, what do we do in a story that’s 100 pages long? The exact same thing, probably. Great thing to ponder for both readers and authors alike.
If I were a writing teacher I would show this and assign my students to write one sentence stories with depth. Maybe I’d have an entire semester where they could only write one perfect sentence a day. That would be fun, and telling I think.
Rating: don’t know how to rate this, so I wont.
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