On Thursday, Dr. Bailey asked us to read some “short-shorts,” really brief pieces of writing, a paragraph to a page, that just capture the essence of something. Then he asked us each to write a short-short of our own.On Tuesday, we discovered our short-shorts all failed pretty miserably, including my own three-page not-so-short-short about an old woman playing the piano. It was more of a short story than a short-short, and this became obvious as my piece went through a sort of mini-workshop. As I read the thing out loud for the class to comment on, it became clear my short-short was two pages (that is, three times) longer than everyone else’s, and I felt naked.
My classmates were polite, though, and they pointed out some of the strong descriptions I had in the piece. Then Dr. Bailey quickly singled out the paragraph that held the essence of my story, the paragraph I have to go chisel out and shape into my second draft. The rest of the details were all right, he explained, but they were just too much for a short-short.
I have a pretty clear picture now of what a short-short is and an even better picture of what a short-short is not. I guess you learn from your mistakes. I think that’s something the whole class found out Tuesday. There were one or two other short stories hiding among our short-shorts, and in general we discovered as a class that our writing tends to suffer from flat characters and vague details.
