So much can be said by saying so little. Conversely, so little can be said by saying so much. Shakespeare, the ultimate wordsmith, says it all in “Brevity is the soul of wit.” Single sentences without qualifiers and one liners, charged with the power of truth, can convey more than elaborate recitals. There is beauty in spare sentences.
Ernest Hemingway was the archetypal economist of words who begrudged every adjective, every redundant word. His style was aggressive minimalism, “a deliberate omission, the tension of withheld information”. This is the iceberg theory of Hemingway — the tip of the iceberg is only a fraction of the submerged theme, leaving the door open to surmise and possibility.
Hemingway was supposed to have written the shortest story in the world, an extreme example of flash fiction. His purported authorship was on account of a lunch-table wager. And the story is, “For sale. Baby shoes never worn.”
