The Short Short Story Form

[Rob Neufeld]

The Short Short Story: An Experimental and Useful Form

The short short form covers many things--from product summary to fable.  Here are a few categories and examples.  As this forum grows, it will be formatted to make it easy to navigate. 

Add your comments and stories.

Memoir

In many memoirs, moments stand out, and can stand alone--more than they do in fiction.  Here's a passage from Mary Judith Messer's 2010 memoir, Moonshiner's Daughter (Doing Well Now Publishers, 2010).  A shockingly mean upbringing in Haywood County is relieved by a woman who owned a house by the school bus stop down the road.

We.moved...to another shack in the Ninevah section of Haywood County.  This shack was...home where some real bad memories happened...We [the Long family kids] had to walk to the school bus stop down the steep hill below the shack.  We passed several houses and a store.  We had to wait for the bus in front of Mrs. West's house.  She had two children, a boy and a girl.  Mrs. West was so nice to  us poor little children...We were waiting on the bus in the pouring rain and Mrs. West saw us soaking wet Long kids and brought us into her pretty house.  She dried us off with a good smelling towel and gave us all some snack crackers and such, all we wanted.  She did this same thing over and over when it was cold, raining or snowing.  We kids never had snack crackers any other time and we just loved them.  I hope we never made pests out of ourselves.  Thank you so much, Mrs. West, for your very kind heart.  I will never forget you.

See about book.

Book summary in a query letter. 

Linda Rohrbach, N.C. Writers' Network member, wrote a summary of her novel, The Prophetess I: Payback, a fantasy drawing from her years as a technology writer, in a query letter to an agent.  See the full query letter.

The novel is a techno-thriller with spiritual paranormal elements. It’s the story of a pregnant computer programmer who, through visions from God, ends up in jail, accused of murder of a child, and is used to expose the plot of a vengeful middle-eastern doctor who teaches “lost” teenage boys to be assassins. Through her harrowing journey to save her marriage and her unborn child, she not only learns to trust her gifts, but also that her infant son needs his father.

What are the varieries of query letter form?  What works?

[Kathryn Magendie]

I love all the new additions to The Read on WNC, Rob!