My friend sent me a link to a short story contest. Since I don’t have enough to do, I thought it would be fun to enter. The contest is simple enough, write a short story. However, the story has to be 100 words or less. I didn’t realize how difficult that would be until I tried doing it.

At first I wanted to get a very brief beginning middle and end of some kind. But for me, storytelling is in the details, and this format did not allow for that. So I wrote a vignette of sorts. It is not a story, hardly any plot, but rather a glimpse.

I can’t post it here since that would disqualify me from the contest, even though I don’t think they would ever find out. The contest will be over in a few weeks, and since I don’t expect to win I will be able to post it then.

In the meantime, here are some comments Sean made after he read it:

“you’re dealing with really strong, concrete sensory details.”

He also suggested I give him ” an action that’s become a tableau vivant perceived through the narrow aperture of memory.”

I edited it a few times, and I think I intensified the moment, but the word constraint makes it difficult to delve into too much detail. I am not allotted the use of enough adjectives unless the entire (very short) piece is nothing more than a string of adjectives laced together to (re)create the moment. I actually kind of think that would be an interesting experiment with words, but for now I will simply experiment with word economy.