Tiny Stories

            These tiny stories created a sort of problem for me because I am a long winded person, I can just talk and talk and talk and not get tired of it because that’s how I tend to tell stories and how I try to get my point across, I can just keep talking and… Well, you get the point. So to try to be concise while still getting a beginning, middle and end in I had to be creative. That’s where the idea of using poetry came in. Poetry is all about the word choice. Specific words is the only way it has to communicate what it needs to, so by limiting myself to various rhyme schemes I was automatically limited to a more suitable tiny story structure. This form helped me to express what I needed to in 30 words or less.

            As for the topic, well that was a different story. I ran through so many different ideas that there is no real way to keep track of them. As I was struggling to get my stories to where they needed to be, the idea hit me. Why not write about exactly that? So, I chose to write about various things that can’t quite get to where they need to be.

            The first inspiration that I looked to for this idea was from the poem Ode on a Grecian Urn, which I read in High School about a boy and a girl who can’t touch because they are painted on a vase. My favorite line is “heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.” To me this poem pains the perfect picture of things that are meant, but can’t be accomplished, and how beautiful the things that we can’t do in life are. It really is a very beautiful poem and can be read in its entirety here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173742

So while my second tiny story is inspired from that poem, the rest were the result of careful consideration and observation of what else in my world seems frustrated by the inability to get what it needs.

            The readings provided by my TMA 112 CRV teacher were fantastic examples of short stories that had perfect plot structure, and I took it as a personal challenge to try to make my stories similar. Many of the tiny stories found here: https://twitter.com/VeryShortStory are able to set an expectation and then defy it in very few words. I don’t know if any of my tiny stories will surprise any one, but the intent is to show a frustrated silent side to things that others may not have discovered before. I hope you all enjoy reading them as much as I liked writing them.