William Faulkner famously said that a novelist is a failed short story writer, and a short story writer is a failed poet. Hemingway, with his creation of the six-word story, combined poetry and drama into a short form that has grown in popularity while remaining difficult to achieve.

A six-word story should provide a movement of conflict, action, and resolution that gives the sense of a complete story transpiring in a moment’s reading.

Here are a few:

For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn. —Ernest Hemingway

Longed for him. Got him. Shit. —Margaret Atwood

All those pages in the fire. —Janet Burroway

Ready to write your own? Go to it!