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It is with a deep sense of irony that I say I could write reams on the joys of short-form writing. When your word count is restricted, you have to make every word count. We’ve probably all heard the quote attributed to Mark Twain, when writing to a friend:
“I didn’t have time to write a short letter so I wrote a long one instead.”
The hardest essay I had to write at university was the one where the tutor imposed a word limit of 500 words. When I managed a team of people, I asked them to summarise any issues on no more than a side of A4, while the Director Education, who was my line manager’s line manager, would not read any memo which comprised more than 6 bullet points.
It has long been my contention that if you cannot explain something in 50 words or fewer, then you probably don’t really understand it. Book reviews? Teach Secondary magazine has a word limit of 150, while the New Yorker’s “Briefly Noted” reviews seem to have a limit of around 124 words. I’ve even experimented with 6 word book reviews: after all, if we can have flash fiction, why not flash non-fiction?
It will not surprise you to learn that I was delighted to discover Short-Form Creative Writing: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology, by H. K. Hummel and Stephanie Lenox. Bloomsbury Academic, the publisher, very kindly sent me a review copy. In keeping with the spirit of the subject matter, I’ll keep this review short!
The first thing to say is that the book is much more than a compendium of prompts and imaginative exercises. A more accurate description would be to say that it is multi-layered. The chapters include sections such as the flash interview, which is a short interview with a writer, the one sentence workshop, and writing prompts. (If you’re of the opinion that short form writing is for people with no time, this book will make you think again. I’ve spent several weeks, on and off, on the prompt which asks you to write a six word memoir.) Another section, deep dive, requires you to explore a particular idea in depth, but with the injunction that if you write five pages you’ve gone too far. Each free dive is followed by a vignette, in which one of the authors does the exercise herself. This is possibly a little gimmicky, but on balance I think a nice touch. It’s the equivalent of a tutor in real live doing the exercise with the class, as opposed to doing the crossword or checking email.
Writing examples are accompanied by word count, and there are many examples. These serve to demonstrate the ideas in practice.
These different ways in to short form writing make the book a very rich experience. Clearly, the techniques discussed may be applied to fiction or non-fiction.
What I especially like is the attention to grammar and literary devices. For example, the section on metaphor is very interesting. In the expression “time flies”, a metaphor is being employed implicitly, that of comparing time to a bird. I’d not thought about that before, but in short form writing, in which every word counts, things like this are important: if you can imply a comparison rather than explicitly make it, the writing becomes tighter — and you keep within the word limit!
Although the book is very readable, I think it is best used as a workshop. That is to say: read the opening part of a chapter as you would listen to a lecture, then work through the exercises and prompts, and then look at the examples provided. This will take you some time, I imagine, thereby proving that a book on short-form writing doesn’t have to be a quick read!
Conclusion: Short-form writing is neither quick nor easy, but the effort is, in my opinion, worth it. This book explores the form with useful information, challenging exercises, and interesting examples. Buy it.