How to create a powerful story with 6 words.
How to get to the point right away. a few words have a powerful effect.
Look back at all books you’ve read, short or long and ask, “What makes for a powerful story?” Do you have to write a long complex story in order for it to be great? Or can you write a short story? In fact, can it only be 6 words long?
In this blog, we’ll address the question How to create a powerful story with 6 words...
HOW TO CREATE A POWERFUL STORY WITH 6 WORDS
Table of Contents
If you were to ask, “What is the greatest story ever written?” Most people would automatically start listing epic long novels, something massive and sweeping. A book with over a thousand pages, but in reality, a short story can be just as powerful. A short poem can be just as powerful as an epic novel of a thousand pages.
And there’s one story out there that fits this description. It’s not epic in length. It does not run on for thousands of pages. It is short, in fact only 6 words in total. And it does everything a great story should do. It’s from Ernest Hemingway. “Baby shoes, for sale, never worn“
MAKE YOUR READER FEEL
With those six words, Ernest Hemingway did something all writers set out to do with their novels. He made us feel. In fact those 6 words hits like a hammer. We can’t help but picture the story. We can’t help but picture the people involved. Feeling their pain. We end up asking ourselves questions we know will never be answered but we ask them anyway. Who they were? What did they go through? What is their story? What emotions are they feeling now?
Sometimes as a writer, you need to get rid of the excess to tell a great story. Getting to the point in the fewest amounts of words. Sometimes the worst thing that can hurt a story is having too many words. Which leads to the covering up of the emotional message. The last thing you want to do as a writer is lose your emotional message in too much clutter.
KNOW WHEN TO LEAVE ON AN EMOTIONAL NOTE
As a writer, you need to know when to end your story. Leaving it on an emotional note, with the greatest amount of impact. You don’t want your most powerful moment happening on page 500 and having a hundred pages left. You want to “arrive late and leave early.” Hit the reader with the message without clutter.
Like the old saying goes “if you look at a scene and can cut it from the story without hurting the story in anyway it shouldn’t be there to start. If you can take something out and it hurts the overall story telling then it can stay in“.
THE READER SHOULD FEEL THE EMOTIONS OF THE CHARACTERS
When writing a scene in your novel always set out to let the readers see the story in their minds as though they’re watching a movie. Let them see and hear and feel the characters’ emotions as they read along. The reader should feel the character’s pain, see their lives, and live in their word. Ernest Hemingway wrote a story that completed those things in only 6 words.
In those 6 words the reader is moved, left wanting to know more. Seeing it play out in their minds. The reader cannot help but reread it over and over.
CREATE A STORY YOU CAN NOT WALK AWAY FROM
It’s the type of story you cannot walk away from. It moves you. The goal of any story be it drama, horror, or comedy is to move the reader in an emotional way. If you’re not moving the reader emotionally you might as well be writing pages in a phone book.
There’s a reason we do not read a phone book for entertainment, it does not make us feel. All readers set out wanting to see something, feel something and in those 6 words Ernest Hemingway made us feel very powerful emotions. He shook the reader to the core. The story stays with you. Even years later you remember it.
YOU HAVE TO KNOW WHEN TO STOP WRITING
He knew by having too many words it would ruin the impact. He could’ve added countless chapters, but like a painter, he needed to know when to stop. As a writer, you run the risk of adding too much. By having the fewest words possible the writer makes sure the reader feels the strongest impact.
You’re making sure the imagination of the reader takes over. As a writer, you know the reader’s imagination is far greater than anything you can create. Some writers go out of their way in describing all the locations. Wanting the reader to see exactly what they see when writing. But all writers have to know no matter how much you describe something the reader will see only what they want to see. So Hemingway left it with a few words knowing everyone reading it will see their own idea.
WE CANNOT HELP BUT FEEL THEIR PAIN
The story is made up of 6 words tells us nothing about the characters. What they looked like or their names. but we cannot help but feel for them. We wonder what they went through, their pain. Now they’re left having to sell the shoes, leaving the reader feeling sad. Wanting to help, but there’s nothing you can do.
The story could’ve used different words, but it would’ve lost its impact. It could’ve said, “baby toys, old, broke for sale.” It would’ve let the reader seeing it in their minds, but not having any strong impact. It could’ve said “nice car, nice interior, for sale” but we wouldn’t have cared. We would’ve read it and forgotten it seconds later.
THE STORY DOES NOT HAVE IT’S EMOTIONAL IMPACT
By saying “baby shoes” it makes the reader feel everything about the magic of having a baby. You can see and feel everything. But the story then switches to “for sale” making the reader stop and wonder “why?” But the story doesn’t have it’s emotional impact yet with those 4 words, something is missing. Selling of shoes doesn’t have a massive impact, anyone can sell shoes.
The story could’ve said “baby shoes, for sake, nice size.” But that would not have the impact as it should, no one would care about that story.
LEAVES YOU ASKING A MILLION QUESTIONS
By ending the story with “never worn” it hits us. Makes us ask a million questions. It leaves us hanging. We want to know what happened. So many questions left unanswered, but the whole time we can’t help but feel.
The objective of storytelling has been done. We think, feel, wonder, question. The power of the story stays with us. It moves us. We talk about it with others long afterward. We remember it for years. It still has the same impact on the reader many years later. It’s timeless, you can read it at any age in any decade and it still has a powerful impact on you.
NEED TO TAKE AWAY THE EXCESS
Many writers want to have the same impact with their readers, but make the mistake of bogging down their story with too many details, too much clutter. A story editor will tell them to take away the pointless excess in order to reach the emotional point. This story accommodates this very thing. With only 6 words so much is said. So much unnecessary information was left out.
Why do some stories have a powerful impact? What does a great story do to the reader’s mind? It makes us feel, it not a just a book. It’s something more. It changes us. Make us see the world differently. It makes us think. You start to question life and everything around you. You daydream about being in the novel as though you’re living it. It has the power to make you daydream and relive the book over and over in your mind.
GREAT BOOKS LEAVES YOU WANTING MORE
It leaves you wanting more from the book. You want to know about the author. You want to meet the writer in person. To read every book they’ve written. We want to study where the book took place, maybe visit the location. You want to read about the history, the people, the places in the novel.
After it’s done it stays in your heart. How often have you read an average book where the moment you’re finished you forget it. Nobody wants that. A bad novel fails to linger in your mind and soul days or weeks later. You don’t care to talk about it with anyone. Or feel anything for it. It just comes and goes.
THE BOOK HAD NO IMPACT ON YOU
The worst thing in the world is when someone shows you a book and asks, “Have you read this?” And you say “I’m not sure.” If you did the novel left no impact on you to remember it. No author wants that for their book.
The best books are the ones that you cannot stop thinking about days and weeks later. You hold the book to your chest as though it’s a part of you. You keep it on your bookshelf all your life. When in a bookstore and you pass by it you stop to touch it for a moment. Like hugging an old friend. You give it to your child so they can read it. That’s the goal of every writer, to create such magic in the words and pages.
YOU THINK ABOUT IT YEARS LATER
6 words is all that it took for Hemingway to tell the saddest story. You cannot help but think about it months and years later. Is it possible for anyone else to tell such a powerful story with only 6 words?
A story has to be a straight line, one message. A story cannot have mixed messages leaving the reader wondering what’s being said. A writer wants to make it clear what’s the story about. With Ernest’s story, we clearly feel the message. We don’t have to be told what it is.
THE READER CAN SEE AND FEEL THE MESSAGE
A great story shouldn’t have to tell you the message. The reader can see and feel it for themselves. A story needs a beginning middle and end. With just six words Ernest was able to pull it off and not create a standard story, but something powerful.
All great writers will say it’s all about the ending. The whole story comes down to the final sentence. No matter how long your novel, it comes down to the ending. It’s where it matters. If the writer fails to come up with the final great line it could hurt the book overall. We’ve all heard the story of Ernest Hemingway rewriting the ending to “A Farewell to arms” 46 times to get it right. He knew he had to get it right. Some writers will take more time writing the last page, last paragraph, the last line, than writing the whole book.
IT ALL COMES DOWN TO THE LAST LINE
The last line has to sum up the message, the emotion. As a writer, you need to know what the story is about. The heart of the story, the theme. The last line sums it up. The reader feels the impact in the last line. If the last line isn’t great the story fails, but if the writer has a great line the story is amazing. We see this happening in Ernest’s story of baby shoes, the last words were just two, “never worn“.
It stays in the reader’s mind forever, you can see it and feel it. It sums up the whole story. In order for Ernest Hemingway to write a powerful line he needed to know what the message was to start with. Because he understood it he was then able to sum it all up in the end, even though it was only 6 words. A story doesn’t have to be long to be powerful. it can be as short as 6 words. But as long as the writer can make the reader see, feel and end on a powerful line the art of storytelling is complete.
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