To the Point

Introductory Questions

• What is the shortest poem that you can write?

• What constitutes a poem? Can poetry lack words?

• Should the nuances and complexity of reality be allowed to be described minimalistically?

• Does fewer words translate to fewer details?

• What is a reasonable word minimum for a prose? An essay?

• Is elaboration better to prioritize over concision?

• How much can you change a story just by removing parts of it and beginning or ending it at a different spot?

• Is omission a form of distortion in journalism and media?

• Can jokes have the same or greater value if delivered without their punchlines?

• How many ways can a piece of writing, or a story be interpreted? Could it depend on its length or amount of detail?

• Have you ever just wanted to know “what comes next”? If you wrote a story of your life, would you leave the reader in suspense once the story’s plot reaches the present day?

• Are twist endings or cliffhangers overused?

• Are video games “solved”? What does it mean to “solve” a game?

The Pen is Shorter than the Sword

• The title of shortest poem is often attributed to a poem “Lines on the Antiquity of Microbes” (1927), whose title is often shortened to “Fleas”; somewhat eerily, the origin of this poem was only somewhat recently described. Take a look at the following short poems and discuss: is concision an art in and of itself? Or are these poems missing out on elaborate details that could help deliver their ideas more clearly and convincingly?

• A “glimpse” of life

  • “It’s No Use” | Sappho (c. 6th century BCE)

  • “In a Station of the Metro” | Ezra Pound (1913)

  • “A Day Away” | Brian E. Pardee (2020)

  • “What Healing Is Meant To Look Like” | Blake Auden (2020)

  • “Worthy” | S. C. Laurie (2021)

  • “Unloading the Dishwasher” | C. W. Bryan (2023)

• Forces greater than ourselves

  • “No Man Is an Island” | John Donne (1624)

  • “Nothing Gold Can Stay” | Robert Frost (1923)

  • “Complete Destruction” | William Carlos Williams (1962)

  • “Me, We” | Muhammad Ali (1975)

  • “Nostalgia” | Giannina Braschi (1980)

  • “Passing Time” | Maya Angelou (2003)

• The shortest prose ever is usually attributed to the six word story: “For sale, Baby shoes, Never worn”, although the origin of the “advert” is disputed. Consider the following terms and examples and discuss: is it more immersive and engaging to you when stories are longer or shorter? Should longer, more detailed prose be celebrated and valued more?

• Terms

  • Novella | Novelette | Short Story

  • Sketch | Flash Fiction | Parable

  • Twitterature | Minisaga | Drabble

  • Sudden Fiction | Microstory

• Stories

  • “The Frog and the Sun” & “The One-Eyed Doe” | Aesop (c. 6th century BCE)

  • “Chapter 3, Story 2 from Gulistan” | Saadi (1258)

  • “The Angel of Tears” | Walt Whitman (1842)

  • “Désirée’s Baby” | Kate Chopin (1893)

  • “Housewife” | Amy Hempel (1997)

• As a musical, David Hein and Irene Sankoff’s Come From Away (2013) is notable for many things, including having no set or costume changes and being a single act. Another single-act musical is a strange cyclical introspection of the writing of the musical itself. Discuss with your team: how much can a musical lack for it to still be a musical? Is a trend of shorter musicals imminent given shorter attention spans?

Abrupt (A-broken) Abridges I: How Did We Get Here?

• Dystopias and utopias presuppose a world that has undergone changes that made it a nightmarishly horrible or incomprehensibly wonderful place to live, the latter sees unfavourable modern analysis. Learn about the following dystopias and utopias and discuss with your team: are these potential futures? How can we avoid them if so? Be sure to learn about the worlds depicted in Star Trek (1966), Noughts and Crosses (2001), and The Hunger Games (2008)

  • “The Pedestrian” | Ray Bradbury (1951)

  • “Billennium” | James Graham Ballard (1961)

  • “We ate the children last” | Yann Martel (2004)

  • “Amaryllis” | Carrie Vaughn (2010)

• Writers could feasibly bridge this gap between the world they describe and that world’s past with backstories. However, in the modern era, this practice is seen as a delicate act. Some believe that backstories help flesh out stories, while others see only cash grabs. Learn about how writers went back and showed the world how the following characters came to be and discuss: how far back could you go with your “backstory”? Given the butterfly effect, could any story that takes place prior to another be considered a backstory?

  • Darth Vader | Sakata Gintoki | Severus Snape

  • Maleficent | Cruella de Vil | Escanor

Abrupt (A-broken) Abridges II: Unfinished Conclusions

• “Don’t leave me hanging!” she pleaded. The allure of knowing what comes next is why cliffhangers work. But the practice has received great criticism for its overuse. Take a look at the following stories that utilize this technique and discuss with your team: is cutting off a part of a story inherently lazy?

  • “The Lady Or The Tiger?” | Frank R. Stockton (1882)

  • “The Interlopers” | Saki (1919)

  • “Appointment With Love” | Sulamith Ish-Kishor (1943)

  • “Charles” & “The Lottery” | Shirley Jackson (1948)

  • “The Elevator” | William Sleator (1993)

• Despite the art form of writing quite possibly providing writers with endless possibilities and options in how they can express their thoughts and ideas, many writers enjoy limiting themselves by practicing constrained writing. Even a loose committee was formed dedicated to seeing what restrictions are possible in novels, poems, and comics. Learn about the following terms that describe what writers subject themselves to and discuss with your team: can restriction be a form of guidance? Be sure to learn about this book by Ernest Vincent Wright and this one by Walter Abish.

  • Rhyme (Imperfect, perfect & identical) | Rhythm | Iambic pentameter

  • Lipogram | Tautogram | Reverse-Lipogram

  • Abecedarius | Pilish | Univocalic | Blackout poem

  • Snowball | Haiku | Sijo | Stile

• In a more visual medium, cliffhangers are even more well-known and more topical, although they are mainly used for television shows, where the enticement comes from feeling the need to watch the next episode; ”Just one more…,” she conceded. In movies, this practice is less used, especially if the film is outside a planned franchise. Learn about the cliffhanger in Inception (2010) and discuss with your team: is it right for the creator of a story to explain a “correct ending”?

• Video games that tell a plot are known as narrative games. These usually have the player play as a protagonist and fulfill the storylines that the game is designed to tell. However, just like with literature, these plots can be intentionally unfinished or cut off to give the player suspense and imagine what the future for the world in which they play in holds. Learn about the following examples of video game cliffhangers and discuss: can endings ever just be up to the audience’s interpretation?

  • Mother III | Shenmue III | Psi-Ops

  • Dino Crisis II | Days Gone | Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time

• Clipping parts of videos and interviews are a common way for journalists to quickly tell the story that they wish to. Unfortunately, there have been many instances where this clipping leads to distortion and disinformation. In today’s age, it is hard to get away from any of it, but there are suggestions that may help. Discuss with your team: should the people in a video be allowed to omit or edit their own videos to explain more clearly how they want to be perceived? Or would that be a form of censorship and a loss of accountability?

Skill-Ceiling Sealing

• Although we’ve come a long way, some video games today are trying to tap back into their nostalgia with games reminding them of the past. Usually, this manifests as players preferring games with easier gameplay and less complex graphics, a practice known as retrogaming, which seeks to revitalize the passion of gaming for those who loved the games of the past—perhaps, even the first ever game, a precursor to Pong. Discuss with your team: is this genre inherently more limiting and an appeal to the past? Is it right to prioritize the past over the present in this way?

• Game designs can be extremely minimal and basic. But they can sprout great love among people if their ideas are expanded upon. Take a look at cases like Orteil’s Cookie Clicker as well as the following cases and discuss with your team: should games be more focused on attracting newer players by being easier to get into or on expanding the games so as to not bore or limit their current players?

  • Chrome Dino | Pac-man | Minesweeper

  • Snake | Doodle jump | 2048

  • Agar.io | Slither.io | Paper.io

• Speaking of limiting current players, most games have an end goal, usually completing the game, that skilled and dedicated players can achieve and compete for the best time to reach said goal, a concept known as speedrunning. However, as a game becomes more and more popular to speedrun, world records can get more and more marginal, until eventually, a run that seems unbeatable is reached. Even then, runners still seem to find enjoyment from playing the same game over and over. Discuss with your team: is this practice productive?

• As computers integrate themselves more and more into our world, they have infiltrated and begun to play the games that we know and love. Particularly in strategy games, computers can optimize and calculate much faster than humans. Even in a game as mathematically complex as chess, computers have been able to slowly optimize to the point that they are leagues ahead of the best human players. Learn about a smaller case of machine learning in games, as well as the following chess bots; then, discuss with your team: will computers infiltrate other games? Will that change anything about how we game?

  • Deep Blue | Alpha Zero | Rybka

  • Stockfish | Leela | Mittens | Torch

Concluding Questions

• Even films can embrace themes of minimalism to evoke different feelings that cannot be created by other means. Learn more about the short film If Anything Happens I Love You (2020). Are these a medium between written prose and more traditional films?

• Poems can also talk about minimalism. Malin Lu’s “Minimalism” (2022) is a great example. Should poems that discuss minimalism be minimalistic themselves?

• Literary minimalism involves a few different techniques and structures. Sometimes authors exercise these techniques to produce works that are very influential. Take a look at this excerpt from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006). Are authors just being lazy? Or can this style bring about more engagement from readers?

• As a sort of blend of art and literature, “22.2 QR Code Poem” (2014) by Genco Gülan is only readable after scanning the generated array. Should art and literature be moving to be more interactable and digital?