Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Hint fiction



A few days ago I heard an intriguing program on NPR about a genre of writing called "hint fiction."

Hint fiction is a story of 25 words or fewer that suggests a larger, more complex story.

Here are a few examples:

1. He had told her it was a treat, yeah, but it was her own damned fault for assuming the gooey middle would be marshmallow.—By Robert Swartwood

2. Before he could say that he had a bad taste in his mouth the poison went straight to his heart. (unknown author)

3. The blood, he later learned, wasn’t so much the issue as was the Band-Aid. (unknown author)

4. All I know about the Borders—the grandmother, the father, mother, Ellie the oldest, Josh and Jack the twins, and Evelyn, the baby—is that one after another they shared their bathwater.—by Randall Brown

5. As he lay there coughing and flush with fever, Jesse thought back to better, more hopeful days—before the outbreak found its way through humankind—and he smiled one last time.--by Steven Seighman

Okay, I'll give it a try:

6. Numbed and aggravated by what he had heard and angry at himself for getting into this situation, he forced himself to remain sitting there in the conference room.

7. Certified blue-blood members of the power structure, they boisterously claimed, as they always did, that they believed in freedom of expression, but when push came to shove it was quite a different story.

8. As he held her head back so that she could vomit more freely and easily--if that's possible--he thought about what it was really like to love, unconditionally, another person.

9. He had trusted and loved her, but she had never, ever believed that in her heart--even when he ravished her and satisfied her completely as no man had ever done with her in bed; instead, she despised him.

10. He looked at the dog, and it stared unflinchingly back at him for the longest time, as if dog and man were locked together in some sort of gauzy dream.

Hint fiction.

Do you dig it? Can you write it?

2 comments:

Muziqislife said...

I like it! How about this:

The shattered glass and blood stains were all that was left of his heart, however numb it had become in the last twenty-four hours.

carolina magic said...

Nice going, Chelsea! Thanks for writing hint fiction.