Prompt #56
Give me just one.
Good morning, lovelies.
Here’s a cute kitten for you:
From the archives (edited):
Today, we’re writing One Sentence Stories!
Yes, you can write an entire story in just one sentence. Need proof? Here’s a whole slew of them from the literary journal MonkeyBicycle: LINK.
If you look at those stories, you’ll probably notice fairly quickly that a one-sentence story can be either long or short. We’ve already done six-word stories, so you know what I mean when I say short. On the other end of the spectrum, there’s Lucy Ellmann’s 1,040 paperback version of her novel, Ducks, Newburyport, all written in one looooooooong sentence.
But we’re not going to do that. We’re going to write “regular-length” one-sentence stories today. (What is “regular length”? You decide. Somewhere between six words and 1,040 pages. But nothing in the Comments over 400 words, please.)
To write a one-sentence story, you’ll need to really focus in on your subject matter and take us directly to the subject at hand. Leave out all the unnecessary excess. We want only that which will give us the perfect picture. And from that one little picture, an “a-ha!” is born.
What do I mean by “a-ha!”? I mean that in the space of one sentence, your narrative swirled, turned, dropped some bit information, made us look twice, set a reader’s mind thinking. A shift occurred. That shift can be on the page, or only implied. There’s so little room in a one-sentence story for a complicated narrative. Instead, leave your reader something that resonates. Something that makes them say “a-ha!”.
Here’s an example of a perfect one-sentence story: “Housewife,” by Amy Hempel. (Go read it and then come back.)
Okay, let’s talk about this little story. It’s possible that you read that sentence and thought—wait, that’s not a story. Well, I suppose it all depends on your definition of a short story. There are many definitions! Here’s one I love from the author Junot Diaz:
“A short, emplaced narrative in which a sympathetic character is forced by a disruptive conflict to make a consequential choice.”
Let’s see how well this definition works for analyzing Hempel’s story.
Is the story short? Yes.
Is it “emplaced”—does it take place somewhere? Yes. Well, sort of. There’s the place she has sex with her husband, and then there’s the place she has sex with another man. And then there is her home, where she is a housewife, and where she exploits the rest of her day with her incantation.
Is there a sympathetic character? I think there is—you may choose to differ.
Was the character forced to make a consequential choice due to a disruptive conflict? To me, there is definite conflict. I mean, she IS sleeping with two men, one of whom she is married to. It can’t be all that easy to juggle these two men. And there’s got to be a reason for all of it (and a reason she wrote the story). I can feel something simmering. Some conflict inside of the housewife. I think she is conflicted about her sense of self, which plays out in her sleeping with two men on the same day. Always!
But does she make a consequential choice? You should know that Diaz makes it very clear that his definition is NOT for every story. Also, for some stories, it may be that the components of a story AREN’T ALWAYS ON THE PAGE. Sometimes in a flash fiction the conflict is off-stage and only hinted at. Implied. Sometimes, the entire story comes after a choice is made. So, you see how things can get complicated very fast when we start talking about stories with forms and contents that don’t neatly follow the rules. Still, if you look hard enough at Hempel’s story, my take is that you can find everything there, below the surface. (A one-sentence story is usually dependent on a lot of implication.) And, to me, that’s what makes this a “story” as opposed to a “vignette.”
To me, this woman has made a “consequential choice.” She’s got two men in her life. She’s decided to sleep with both of them, damn the consequences. And to make herself feel better, she “exploits” the rest of her day by “incanting” the words “French film, French film.” In other words, she finds a way to benefit from her actions so that she can live with herself. She comes up with an incantation (magical way of thinking) that makes her feel as though she is living inside of a French film—oh, the sexy French and their affairs! She rises above her housewife existence in this way, using her sexuality to feel something more.
And all of this from one sentence!
Of course, I’m forcing this little story to fit one particular definition of “story,” when, in fact, it may not fit at all. This is all subjective stuff. Things to think about and ponder.
And now it’s your turn.
TODAY’S PROMPT
Write one fabulous story in one fabulous sentence.
Write something that perhaps leaves us pondering until we finally “get” it. A-ha!
That’s it. Four hundred words max in the Comments. Hope you have fun with this.
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When we first met on the street, letting our dogs say hello, the third thing she told me was that her first husband hung himself in their basement when they were twenty-nine and how it set her free.