Prompt #31
Give Me a Hint
“Prompting Good People Since December 2023”
Good morning, everybody.
It’s been a tough few days, to say the least. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m pretty spent. So, this week, we’re taking it easy. (Sort of.) This week, we’re writing teeny, tiny stories.
We’ve written tiny before. For those who have been around since the beginning, you may remember writing six-word stories. And then we did fifty-word stories, followed by 100-word stories. Today, we’re trying yet another form: hint fiction.
What is hint fiction? Here’s how Robert Smartwood—credited with having invented the term—defines it:
hint fiction (n) : a story of 25 words or fewer that suggests a larger, more complex story
And here’s what he has to say about the form:
“… very, very, very, VERY short stories should be called Hint Fiction. Because that’s all the reader is ever given. Just a hint. Not a scene, or a setting, or even a complete character sketch. They are given a hint, nothing more, and are asked — nay, forced — to fill in the blanks. And believe me, there are a lot of blanks.”
So, how do you go about writing a successful hint fiction? Smartwood, again:
“One of the biggest hints in Hint Fiction is the title. It’s like the setup to a joke, and the “story” is the punch line. Without the one, the other won’t work.”
Smartwood’s anthology, hint fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer, is a collection of 125 of these tiny stories written by a variety of writers, including some who are very well-known.
Here’s a pretty amazing hint fiction he wrote in 2008 (note the absolute need for this particular title in this one): LINK
Corrections and Clarifications
It was Fredrick Miller, not his murdered son Matthew, who was executed Monday night at Henshaw Prison.
And here, for your reading pleasure, are a few more examples of the form (I have cut and pasted them from online sources).
From NPR:
Houston, We Have a Problem (by J. Matthew Zoss)
I'm sorry, but there's not enough air in here for everyone. I'll tell them you were a hero.
The Return (by Joe R. Lansdale)
They buried him deep. Again.
And this one, Trust, by Don Lee, from the Long River Review:
At the party, he tells her he’s a painter, meaning of houses. She misunderstands, assuming he’s an artist. Harmless, he thinks.
From The New Yorker, Blind Date, by Max Barry:
She walks in and heads turn. I’m stunned. This is my setup? She looks sixteen. Course, it’s hard to tell, through the scope.
From the Los Angeles Times:
Ransom (by Stuart Dybek)
Broke and desperate, I kidnapped myself.
Ransom notes were sent to interested parties. Later, I sent hair and fingernails, too.
They insisted on an ear.
That was a lot of examples! If you want to read more, head to THIS page and click on “Contests.”
Note: Anything 25 words or shorter counts as a hint fiction. “For Sale: Baby shoes; never worn,” attributed to Hemingway, is both a six-word story AND a hint fiction.
Time to get to the prompt!
TODAY’S PROMPT
Write your own hint fiction (25 words or less, including the title).
You may want to think of the title as the “set-up,” and the main part of the story as the “punch line” or “delivery.”
OR don’t include a title. Your choice.
These tiny stories usually depend massively on implication. You’re only “hinting” at what may have happened, leaving it up to your reader to figure things out.
Feel free to write six-word stories or six-word memoirs, like we did in Prompt #1. As a reminder, here are a few six-word stories/memoirs I wrote back then:
How did this happen? What now?
Stopped looking back. Found myself here.
Not sure of anything at all.
It’s all one big fucking blur.
Not doing any of that again.
Woke up, so that’s a start.
Am I happy? What a question.
Don’t tell me. Okay, tell me.
Bad listener. Big talker. Always apologizing.
Write as many stories as you want. Post away!
[deleted]
"'Til Death Do Us Part."
Which, when you think about it, could come in quite handy.