Three Hundred Words

Write a story he said. Three hundred words he said. Should be easy I said. Yeah right.

What sort of a story can you write in three hundred words? Well, fascinations that open questions the reader must answer. Hints that promise what three hundred words can't deliver but cause the dreams that do. Enticements to indulgence in hidden pleasures of fancy, the kind that nobody else sees...

Try a four-hundred and thirty something word narrative leading nowhere. I didn't believe it could be so difficult. It's easy to say nothing in three hundred words, it's even easy to say something, but telling a story?...

Yeah OK. Davo got maggoty drunk and got picked up by the cops... Yeah that sort of story can be told in about three hundred words. A man walks into a bar… Yeah that can dragged out to three hundred words. But something with more substance?

Then it occurred to me. First person. The day after saying to somebody I don’t write first person, first person. You can get all chummy with first person, so I gave it a go.

The page titled Northern Certainty is that story.

And this is exactly two hundred words now.