Hi Literary Gangsters. Oh, what’s been on my mind? Oh just letting lose on language, that’s all really. But sometimes it’s fun to keep things tight. I saw a prompt @WritersMagazine asking for ten-word stories based on Hemingway’s six-word story idea, and I decided to have some fun so here’s my story.

1942, Brisbane

= MY MARY WAIT FOR ME = John =

[U.S. Archives]

I think sometimes it’s important to use visual aspects to tell your micro-fiction story. Your story could look like a picture of something, or it could use punctuation to make breaks in the story which is what I’ve done. 10 words in a story doesn’t mean it has to conform to normal story rules. Whatever the hell they are these days anyway. (Literary Gangster says break them if it makes for a good story, dammit!)

I’ve used italics to set the place and time as one would in a letter header. I’ve used dashes and capital letters to infer that the ‘hamburger meat’ part of this story might have been sent in a telegram. I’ve used [these] to show where the ‘telegram’ was sourced, which ads to the plot twist in this story considering the date, time, format given and the content of John’s message. Essentially, this is a story of unrequited love. (Mary, you bitch!)

It takes various styles and attempts to get it right, it’s like a puzzle that needs to be solved. Believe it or not, this story has had eleven versions! Okay now twelve by the time I’ve written this.

Peace out x

TLG.