For the past couple of months, considering I want to be a writer, I've been thinking about writing about something besides myself. Articles on topics that interest me, non-fiction, poetry maybe? I wasn't really sure where to start. Then opportunity presented itself, and a friend suggested I join the Write Club, a bunch of people who meet every week to write. This was a chance to actually write about something apart from the sordid details of my life.
I went for my first ever Write Club meetup in Bangalore a couple of days back. The topic of the meetup was Hint Fiction or Short Short Stories. Hint Fiction is a story of 25 words or less that suggests a larger, more complex story. The story is supposed to get the reader to imagine what is left unsaid. The most famous one is probably by Earnest Hemingway. It is said that he won a bet where he had to come up with a story in six words. So came about “For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn".
We were given 2 exercises - writing a hint story and building a larger story from the first. So here I have documented my first attempts at writing that something else. Of course, like everyone else, I too did have a go at 'Composition' during school time - it was in fact my favourite part of the English Language paper. I even remember getting a 25 on 25 (NERD!!!!!) for one of them, titled Yearning - the story of an unborn child. In retrospect, I wonder why I chose a subject so morbid... So yeah, back to my first attempts at writing that something else.
Exercise 1:
The man followed the trail - hoof marks and scat. It turned a corner and disappeared behind a bush. As he flew through the air, he thought to himself, "That damn buffalo."
Exercise 2:
There was hardly a sound; except for the mating call of a yellow beaked bird. The jungle was still, the leaves on the trees barely stirring. If one listened carefully, one could discern the footfall of the man, the rustle of his clothes and the crack as a twig snapped beneath his foot.
The man continued on the trail - following the hoof marks and scat. He picked up a brown pellet off the ground. It was still warm, fresh. The trail turned a corner, disappearing behind a bush, not really a trail anymore.
The man paused; a premonition that in a moment or two, his destiny would change. Thirty thousand dollars. That was what was promised in exchange for the bulls head on a trophy. A new rifle, new boots and then some. Thirty thousand dollars would also buy him a ticket, a new lease at life.This would be the last time. The man shook his head as if to banish his thoughts and deal with the matter at hand.
It would only be a few more minutes. Just as he cocked the rifle, the wind was knocked out of him. He flew through the air and landed seven feet away. "That damn beast", he thought before it lifted him once again and flung him further away, then proceeding to trample him. He was one with the earth now. One last thought flickered through his mind as he breathed his last, "The hunter has become the hunted."
Don't think it's really good, but it's a start. And it's not bad either. Hah! Will try more of this.
Two last things,
1) When Roald Dahl said, "You never know when a lovely idea is going to flit suddenly into your mind, but by golly, when it does come along, you grab it with both hands and hang on to it tight. The trick is to write it down at once, otherwise you'll forget it.", he must have meant getting inspired by Hint Fiction.
2) Woody Allen too writes some semblance of it. My favourite one is from his book "Without Feathers", a piece called "A Day in the Life of a Doe" from the chapter Lesser Known Ballets. So it goes like this "Unbearably lovely music is heard as the curtain rises, and we see the woods on a summer afternoon. A fawn dances on and nibbles slowly at some leaves. He drifts lazily through the soft foliage. Soon he starts coughing and drops dead." I love it!
