10-Word Story Challenge | Pronouns

Can You Repack a Story into 10 Words

Shereen Bingham dared me!

Shereen Bingham tagged me into her response to Sheri Jacobs’s 10-word story challenge which has been making its merry way around Medium these past few weeks — Sheri, did you have any idea what you were starting when you launched this challenge?! 😅

Shereen asked me, and other readers, to nominate which of her six 10-word stories we liked the most and to provide feedback for our selection. I obliged with a comment that, in part, went like this —

My preference — and it is just that — is to use pronouns for the characters and to make them relatable by their actions or the context in which they find themselves in. As I said, that’s just me, being me.

I was making reference to a few of Shereen’s 10-word stories where she provided descriptive details about her characters e.g. ‘despondent gun enthusiast’, whereas I’m inclined to use pronouns like ‘he’ and ‘him’, and let the rest of the words carry the story.

Shereen responded to my comment as so —

I appreciate your insight on referring to the characters; it helps me analyze how the parts of the story function. I see how using just pronouns to identify the characters means you get more words to describe action and context. In the some where I gave descriptions of the characters, it seems like their role (like “gun enthusiast” in #3) and descriptive adjective (like “despondent”) had to do double duty. They had to function to help contextualize the action (providing information that made the actions meaningful) in addition to identifying the character. Wow, this is interesting to think about!

Some more back and forth and then this from Shereen —

How could I tell my story using context and actions if I only used “he” to describe the shooter? Haha, will you take this challenge and show me? :)

Me and my big, virtual mouth! 😆

So here we are!

Challenge accepted! 🙌

Did I really ever have a choice?! 😜

Shereen’s original story —

“The despondent gun enthusiast fired his revolver one last time.”

And the two variations, I hereby submit that make indirect reference to the protagonist, the one Shereen calls ‘the despondent gun enthusiast’ —

# 1 — Ironically, his marksmanship was the ultimate solution to his despondency.

…

# 2 — His precious revolver became the ultimate solution to his despondency.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I used the possessive adjective ‘his’ rather than the pronoun, ‘he’, that Shereen and I were banging on about in the comments! If you want to take me to task on that, you’re most welcome to do so in the comments.

I did think about switching ‘ultimate’ for words like, ‘fatal’, ‘deadly’, ‘terminal’, or ‘final’. I ultimately decided that ‘ultimate’ was the best choice as it conveyed a subtle blend of achievement and finality — and Shereen did mean ‘one last time’ to be a deliberately planned, fatal shot.

‘Ultimate’ forces the reader to question what’s going on and makes them do some brain work — but not so much that it causes confusion. It shifts them into being active readers instead of passive readers who are simply being told stuff.

I might have this all wrong, but my understanding of microfiction stories like these 10-worders is that they function as word puzzles that rely heavily on semantics and inference to actively steer the reader’s thinking. Again, dish it up to me in the comments if you disagree.

What Do You Think?

My plan had been to add my two ‘ultimate solution’ stories to the discussion that Shereen and I have happening on her post, but then I thought it would be interesting to open up the discussion to other readers and writers and hear what they have to say about the use of pronouns and possessive adjectives in microfiction. Please feel free to add your two pennies’ worth. I’d especially like to hear from — Connie Song | Amanda Laughtland | Alison Acheson | Christina M. Ward | Estacious(Charles White) | Victor Sarkin | Tree Langdon 🙏 ✨

In case you need to see more examples of pronouns and possessive adjectives at work, here are a couple of 10-word stories that I rustled up for you to consider —

The madness of her conviction proved to be her remaking. (possessive adjective : her)

…

Once again, he was oblivious to the power of remorse. (pronoun: he)

Here is Shereen’s response to Sheri Jacobs’s 10-Word Story Challenge —

And here is mine —

Keeping it all in house at The Brain is A Noodle, with special thanks to the wonderful Lucy Dan 蛋小姐 (she/her/她). Thank you all for reading. 🙏 💕

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