World's Shortest Novels: January 2011

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Baby Shoes

Suggested by Joe Herring, Jr. - Snopes.com issued "undetermined" rating

Hemingway on a bet said that he could write a story in under 10 words: Here it is: "Classified: Baby Goods. For sale, baby shoes, never worn."

Examples of good, short novels

Short:
Snoopy’s Novel, 12 July 1965

Part I
It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out! A door slammed. The maid screamed.
Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon!
While millions of people were starving, the king lived in luxury. Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas, a boy was growing up.

Part II
A light snow was falling, and the little girl with the tattered shawl had not sold a violet all day.
At that very moment, a young intern at City Hospital was making an important discovery. The mysterious patient in Room 213 had finally awakened. She moaned softly.
Could it be that she was the sister of the boy in Kansas who loved the girl with the tattered shawl who was the daughter of the maid who had escaped from the pirates?
The intern frowned.
“Stampede!” the foreman shouted, and forty thousand head of cattle thundered down on the tiny camp. The two men rolled on the ground grappling beneath the murderous hooves. A left and a right. A left. Another left and right. An uppercut to the jaw. The fight was over. And so the ranch was saved.
The young intern sat by himself in one corner of the coffee shop. He had learned about medicine, but more importantly, he had learned something about life.
THE END

Shorter:
Englewood Entropy
by Anonymous
Chapter 1
Dr. Blanton Tufford, a Stanford University physics professor who studied the structure of the universe, was killed on Sunday when a car crashed into the Englewood, N.J., coffee shop where he was sitting.
The End

Even Shorter:
("The Dinosaur") by Augusto Monterroso.
"Cuando despertó, el dinosaurio todavía estaba allí."
("When he awoke, the dinosaur was still there.")

Try your hand

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Baby Shoes