Impact (50 words)
Launching with a tiny dribble from the Vault by BLR
We were on a crash-course with destiny. Fate was our driver. Damn truck came out of nowhere as a nightmare. Momentum and velocity denied any abeyance as tires screeched toward impact. Only a split-second to glance at my fiancée, mother of our unborn child. Heedless, that driver forever changed everything.
Drafts: 10.8.2016 & 7.14.2026
Words by Brandon L. Rucker. Copyright © 2016-2026.
A note on my postings here — from the Vault means previously unpublished works. From the Archive means previously published works. And All-New is self-explanatory.
So, what the heck is a dribble?
So glad you asked. In literary fiction terms, a dribble is a micro-fiction story of exactly 50 words. No more, no less.
It’s a great exercise for us writers to sharpen our prose and really focus on the clarity of our storytelling (no, it’s not particularly an exercise for character development). It can be is a very exacting process, not for the faint of heart because the author will be killing so many precious darlings!
Oh, the massacre! But what survives the carnage should be so keen that it cuts quick and deep. Figuratively speaking, of course.
Same goes for drabbles (100 words), double drabbles (yep, you guessed it, 200 words) and the larger micro and flash fictions. We used to have a good time writing, sharing and critiquing these and all other ultra-short fictions back in the workshop days of a quarter century ago (but I digress. And lament).
For the purposes of this Substack, all of the above short (shortest?) forms will be featured here in The Laconic. By yours most true, perhaps others too. I dunno, but I couldn’t resist the urge to rhyme there. Sorry.
Oh, by the way, welcome to The Laconic. First of its name. And hopefully not the last of its kind.
But wait . . . there’s more?
Yes. A bonus feature of sorts . . .
The Six-Word Story
So, I figured, why not launch this little publication with not ONE but TWO (edit: FOUR total) of my shortest pieces to perfectly illustrate the word ‘laconic’ in terms of fiction.
And with that in mind, I present a bonus to this first edition with a trio of six-word stories of mine below.
Wait, what’s that? A story of a mere 6 words? The heck?
Surely many of you are familiar with the legendary six-word story, attributed (but not confirmed) to the late great Ernest Hemingway?
For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.
— Ernest Hemingway???
Terse. Tragic. Right?
But . . . maybe not (see further below).
And there are others out there by authors who’ve indulged the challenge. See: Six Word Stories.net
One Three of mine follow . . .
Six-Word Story 1:
At my funeral, no one wept.
Six-Word Story 2:
Husband maimed. Battered wife got revenge.
Six-Word Story 3:
Went west. Chased dreams. Entertained everyone.
Naturally, six-word stories will leave a bit of mystery to them and really that’s kind of the point as they demand you interact with them by engaging your imagination. That participation can be fun.
For the first one – the explicit mystery is: how would one know that no one wept at their funeral? The possibilities are endless, right? Is the story from a metaphysical POV in the afterlife—a ghost? Could it be, perhaps, that’s not the narrators actual body in that casket? Was the real person, still at-large, really horrible and has somehow faked their death for whatever reason?
For the second one – well, that one is a little more obvious. And that was by design as I deliberately chose those six words to be more direct. We can go either way with these little things.
The third one – the mystery in that one is really in that third sentence. Entertained everyone could mean a plethora of things. The good, the bad and the ugly, right? Eek! The horror! Or . . . the glory? I’ll leave you to it.
But it’s kinda like chose your own plot, huh?
All and all, a fun tease to the active imagination and I’m so here for that as a reader and writer.
Closure
Well, that’s all I have for this first collector’s edition of The Laconic. It wasn’t as brief as I had originally planned, heh, but I figured with this maiden voyage, there should probably be more, um, context, perhaps for the uninitiated who may have stumbled across this thing haphazardly. Hey, it happens.
Anyway, stick with us me, kids Dear Readers. There will be more-of-less to come!
All my best to you and yours.
Thanks for reading!
-BLR