When shorter can be better

I remember a boss that said to me once: “One page is worth a million dollars, two pages one hundred thousand”.

Stories told in just six words Stories told in just six words, inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s famous challenge.

For sale: baby shoes, never used. —Ernest Hemingway

Brevity is a virtue.

This is a collection of short short stories consisting of just six words. It was inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s famous challenge.

Wordpress – Code is Poetry.

Present now, new tomorrow, no limits —Mark Spencer

Flash fiction is fiction of extreme brevity. There is no widely accepted definition of the length of the category. Some self-described markets for flash fiction impose caps as low as 300, while others consider stories as long as 1000 words to be flash fiction. Other names for flash fiction include sudden fiction, microfiction, micro-story, postcard fiction, prosetry and short short story, though distinctions are sometimes drawn between some of these terms; for example, sometimes 1,000 words is considered the cut-off between “flash fiction” and the slightly longer “sudden fiction”.

Whose line was it anyway —Mark Spencer

Six Words of Advice

Tilopa gave Naropa a teaching called the Six Words of Advice, the original Sanskrit or Bengali of which is not extant; the text has reached us in Tibetan translation. In Tibetan, the teaching is called gnad kyi gzer drug – literally, “six nails of key points” – the aptness of which title becomes clear if one considers the meaning of the English idiomatic expression, “to hit the nail on the head.”

According to Ken McLeod, the text contains exactly six words; the two English translations given in the following table are both attributed to him.
Six Words of Advice

Six Words of Advice

	First short, literal translation	Later long, explanatory translation	Tibetan (Wylie transliteration)
1	Don’t recall	Let go of what has passed	mi mno
2	Don’t imagine	Let go of what may come	mi bsam
3	Don’t think	Let go of what is happening now	mi shes
4	Don’t examine	Don’t try to figure anything out	mi dpyod
5	Don’t control	Don’t try to make anything happen	mi sgom
6	Rest	Relax, right now, and rest	rang sar bzhag

Not quite what I was planning

For a more visualy based set of stories, see Six Word Stories with pictures or as a slide show (turn on “Show Info” to get captions)