Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer

by Robert Swartwood (Editor), Madeline Mora-Summonte (Contributor)

A story collection that proves less is more. The stories in this collection run the gamut from playful to tragic, conservative to experimental, but they all have one thing in common: they are no more than 25 words long. Robert Swartwood was inspired by Ernest Hemingway's possibly apocryphal six-word story―"For Sale: baby shoes, never worn"―to foster the writing of these incredibly short-short stories. He termed them "hint fiction" because the few chosen words suggest a larger, more complex chain of events. Spare and evocative, these stories prove that a brilliantly honed narrative can be as startling and powerful as a story of traditional length. The 125 gemlike stories in this collection come from such best-selling and award-winning authors as Joyce Carol Oates, Ha Jin, Peter Straub, and James Frey, as well as emerging writers.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies, Writing, Poetry, Literature, Flash Fiction

188 pages, Paperback

First published October 6, 2010

About the author

USA Today bestselling and ITW Thriller Award–winning author of The Serial Killer's Wife, The Killing Room, Man of Wax, and several other novels. He created the term "hint fiction" and edited Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer.

Reviews

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

when we got this book in the other day, i looked at it and thought: "ugh - gimmick." and i read the three stories on the front cover and i thought - "i no longer understand the publishing industry." and then i opened it up, just out of curiosity and saw a story by jonathan carroll. okay, book, now you have my attention. so i flipped through it, and then i read the précis, and i was totally hooked.

this isn't flash fiction. these aren't stories that are short just for the fuck of it. hint fiction is meant to be evocative - to make you yearn for a story that is suggested but never written. in some ways, it is very lazy - you get away with writing fewer than 25 words and calling it a day. on the other hand, it is wicked hard to get the mood right. not all of these are perfect - some of them read like o. henry "punch lines." but some of them truly do evoke a mood in the reader:

Public Mourning

It was Shark Week again. She flipped the T.V. off. She couldn't bear to watch him die one more time.

(Mercedes M. Yardley)


Children

He took her out for a picnic to discuss what they wanted to do about it. "You want Bud Light or O'Doul's?" he asked her.

(Jake Thomas)


In the Talladega National Forest

Looking for the body, we found hundreds of burned-out lightbulbs in a clearing. Found four bodies, but not the body we were looking for.

(Michael Martone)


those are wonderful, implicit. they pique my curiosity as a reader. they leave me unsatisfied, but my mind races to fill in the gaps. i am certainly glad i took some time off of cramming "information representation and retrieval" into my skull last night to read this, because many of them are haunting and mental rib-sticking. and a major eye-roll to mister james frey for his exactly twenty-five word story, as though he was trying to push the envelope just so far, to see if he could make it. fool.

i leave you with this, as i go off to my own:


Free Enterprise

Retail. Thirty-nine hours a week for eighteen years, she says, proud. Like she's a survivor of rape and she knows it.

(Kelly Spitzer)

come to my blog!

[Jasmine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read books to destress. I would assume this was a weird thing to say and qualify it anywhere but here. here I will assume you all do the same thing. This was my, i hate my life and midterms book. I read it walking to connors comedy show and walking to he subway after the show.

okay I didn't like this quite as much as karen. I thought several of the stories were overwritten just because you have 25 words to play with doesn't mean you need them all. I'm also generally not a fan of titles, I know I know, it's a thing I forget to read them, or I read them and forget them immediately, or I don't pay attention when I read them. I really tried to pay attention to them but alas I am not genetically inclined to do so. The fact is there are some serious five star stories here. Weirdly the ones I really liked tended to be by popular authors I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole but now I am force to reevaluate. I will include some of my favorites here sans title so you can experience them like I do. if you prefer to be a normal person buy the book yourself.

joe lannsdale
they burried him deep. Again.

jack ketchum
the old cat blinked once, focused. then was lost to her forever.

peter straub
when, on his deathbed, he last saw her, she had not aged by so much as a day.

joyce carol oates (I know I'm sorry)
"I kept myself alive"

ken bruen
He took her by surprise, she took him for all he was worth

david joseph
I miss her more than the others

joe schreiber
after seventeen days she finally broke down and called him "daddy".

stephen dunn
"you dumb fuck. you pathetic, dumb fuck"

frank byrns
my name is Phuc. people call me john

now compare what I like to what Karen likes and hypothesis about us as human beings.

[Kirk · Rating 5 out of 5]

So one day I was trolling newpages.com looking for new rejection opportunities when I discovered a call for 25-word stories. I figured, How hard can 25 words be? I've wasted more than that many trying to explain to the cops that instead of writing me a ticket for not being able to produce my insurance card on demand we could just call my friendly Farmers agent and he'd be happy to tell them I am indeed paid-up on my premiums. So I sat down to crank out a few of these puppies, thinking, prolificity, I am thou. And, oddly enough, hint fiction turns out to be very difficult. There is, first of all, the struggle of a conceit, some idea, usually found in the relationship between the title and the text. And then there's the punchline. Make no mistake: a lot of these short shorts---including my own ("Afterglow") are constructed around set-ups and what Mark Twain would call the "snapper." Which is not a bad thing unless you fret like a lot of critics do about the mechanical nature of literary form. To a certain extent, brevity has always suffered from this accusation, that the shorter the story the more inorganic the structure is. A lot of folks tried to counter that argument (some dude named Poe, for example), with not entirely convincing results. So I say, Embrace the constraints and see what you can do within the aphorism, the epitaph, the rim shot, the koan, the haiku (gesundheit), the mini-skirt. It's a great exercise, and believe you me, it is exercise: mine took a few hours. Other contributors probably popped theirs out on the first try, but as this review attests, I tend toward the verbose and scattershot. With the possible exception of Yes albums, I like maximalism, not minimalism. Cadences, flowing sentences, ornament and scrollwork, convolutions of syntax ... I love it all, and probably too much for anyone not named Henry James. So the process for me involved a lot of shaving down, a good-bye to words I thought I was married to. And that's always healthy. For readers the fun is supplying the context behind the hint: characters, situations, the causal chain, the why and the what. I like to think of these stories as hot seeds for the soul. Eat a few and they take root in you, the shoots of narrative possibilities sinking deep seeking the nutrients of imagination, mutually feeding. (That's ripping off Melville, another great maximiller). Lean is good for you as long as you realize the risk of anorexia. Aseticism is smart discipline but don't make a career of it unless you're Hemingway (whose name, by the way, could stand some condensing). Gorge on some adverbs once in a while bc it's not them but the predicates that'll kill you.

[Carm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really fun concept with plenty of great stories. Mildly infuriating, though, when I hit the last 25% and realized it’s basically 125 micro-biographies of contributing authors, some wordier than the stories themselves. Eh… can’t say I didn’t see it coming.

[Doug Bolden · Rating 3 out of 5]

The experiment is interesting and worthy, as are a good number of these micro-stories. I was especially intrigued to see a number of horror/thriller writers contributing (LANSDALE!). The problem, for me, is that many would make awesome first lines or last lines to a story, would make intriguing twists at the middle, but feel too open to be standalone. I know the goal is to "hint" at the larger story, but it still feels more like I am hearing the set up rather than the summation, given the shout (or sometimes cough) of a story but not its soul. The introduction cited "For sale: baby shoes, never used." says just about all it needs to say. It doesn't have to exist in the context of a fuller story to have all the emotional impact. It does exist in the context of a larger story but it is that longer story's utter essence. On a side note, each story has a title. For the most part, these are innocuous words used to "mark" the stories. In a couple of cases, they are the key to the story (Joyce Carol Oates' "I kept myself alive" does not require the title "The Widows First Year", but it does significantly change the flavor of the story). In one case, David Joseph's "Mein Fuhrer", knowing the title ruins, for me, the vibe of "By now, I have burned more pages than I have read." It becomes a critique of fanaticism, and feels like little else when those words were invocation on their own.

Bill Napier's short piece is possibly my favorite, discussing small houses with smaller couplers inside a cadaver. Amazing how much imagery went into it.Jack Kilborn's "Chuck", which is apparently about a stewardess eating vomit, gets a special clap for being as much of a horror/gross story as you need in under 25 words. L. R. Bonehill's "Cull" also manages to punch in some horror in a short space: "There had been rumors from the North for months. None of us believed it, until the night we started to kill our children, too."

[Ben Loory · Rating 5 out of 5]

the thing i really love about this book is not so much the stories themselves (though i do love a lot of the stories) as the conception of story at work here. it's not the fact that these stories are so short (25 words or less) which is so interesting; it's that they are in fact (at least the best ones) quite long-- it's just that only the tip of the stories are visible on the page, with the remainder of them (the much larger part) arising only in your imagination. you read the story and then (if you're me, at least) you pause and stare blankly at the page for a while, and then all of a sudden the rest of the story rises up in the distance. it's really cool and i have no idea how people do it; i've tried but my mind is way too linear. it's not something i've really seen anywhere else. it's a one of a kind book.

[Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's an example of Hint Fiction, the very first story in the book, a story by Joe R. Lansdale called "The Return": "They buried him deep. Again."



And that's it. The whole story. Isn't that marvelous? The stories in this book flash like a lightning bolt across the sky of your head when you read them. Sometimes there's a little thunder. And rain.



Okay, one more. "The Lover's Regret" by Tess Gerritsen: "They are now grown up, the children I abandoned to be with you. They hate me. But not nearly as much as I hate you."

[ParisaM · Rating 2 out of 5]

‏با ترجمه امیرحسین میرزائیان
بعضیاشو نفهمیدم بعضیاشم خوب بود خیلیاشم meh.

******

کوین هاسی/درمان
دکتر ماسویو پیروزمندانه کودک بیمار را در آغوش گرفت. او پس از سال‌ها توانسته بود درمانی بیابد. بیرون، آفتاب، هیروشیما را گرم می‌کرد. و بعد او نور شدید و ناگهانی را دید.

جنیفر هدک/تست بارداری
یک قطره ادرار. دعایی بی‌پاسخ. دومین خط صورتی پایان کودکی یک نفر را به آغاز کودکی دیگری پیوند می‌زند.

آی. آر. بونهیل/قربانی بقای نسل قوی‌ترها
ماه‌ها بود که از شمال شایعاتی به گوش می‌رسید. هیچ‌کدام‌مان آنها را باور نکردیم، تا اینکه یک شب خودمان هم دست به کار کشتن بچه‌هایمان شدیم.

بن وایت/پیش از پرسئوس
مدوسا چهره‌ی سنگی مرد را از خود دور می‌کند و اشک‌های خارا می‌ریزد. انگار کلاه کافی نبود. دفعه‌ی بعد چشم‌بند هم می‌بندد.

وال گریفین/بی‌خوابی
زیبای خفته ناراحت سوزن دوک نخ‌ریسی نبود. این بوسه‌ی بیداری بود که از آن نفرت داشت.

شانا جرمین/دختر نوح
«شمردن بلد نیستی؟ گفتم دو تا از هر کدام». نوح توده‌ی پشم‌آلود سپید و سیاهی که پیچ و تاب می‌خورد را جلویش تکان داد و ادامه داد: «این سه تاست».

مارشال ریان مارسسکا/یادآور
لکه‌ی کوچک هرگز پاک نشد. هیچ‌کس متوجه وجودش نمی‌شد، اما مرد همیشه می‌دانست که لکه آنجاست. شلوار مورد علاقه‌اش ��ود.

رکسان گی/نغمه‌ی تلخِ تلخِ معدنچی
وقتی معدن را بستند، او به میخوارگی روی آورد. دلش هنوز جای تنگ و تاریکی را می‌خواست که در آن فرو رود. تفاوت در این بود که این بار ما را هم با خودش می‌برد.

[Roman · Rating 3 out of 5]

hint fiction: a story of 25 words or fewer that suggests a larger, more complex story.

I'll be honest, some of these read like posts I see on the "bad two sentence horror stories" Twitter account but I still had a lot of fun reading these and they definitely got me thinking.
I like unique writing exercises, so trying to write a piece of hint fiction would be cool and I thought some of these could work well as prompts with which to practice writing longer stories.

The author bios at the end were also written in 25 words, which some authors took advantage of (like "L.R. Bonehill never meant to hurt anyone all those years ago; he just wanted to play, that's all.") but most sadly didn't.

[Caitlin Conlon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my first introduction to hint fiction & it was absolutely fabulous. A worthwhile read, especially so as a poet.

[Neil Franz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like the idea but it didn't leave an impression.

[Anna Jaskiewicz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I prefer to reserve my 5-star ratings for books that do three things:
1. They must evoke some serious emotion in me
2. They must make me think deeply about myself and/or the world in which we live
3. They must make me want to read them a second time.
“Hint Fiction” hits all of those check-marks for me and did so unexpectedly, which makes me even more impressed with this anthology. Given the sheer size of the little thing, I picked it up during a day-long vacation expecting a short and interesting quick read. Although it was indeed short and interesting, it does so much more than entertain.

Swartwood’s intro is brilliantly written and provides an explanation to this newer form of fiction. As he suggests in the intro, these extremely short pieces of prose force the reader to meet the writer in the story that goes beyond the handful of words he/she has put on the page. Readers will only get a “hint” as to what the writer is suggesting within their work. The concept of this type of fiction is compelling and I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed it so much, especially since I tend to be moved my much longer works (Dostoyevsky anyone?).

I truly believe that reading these “hint fictions” have made me a much stronger reader. I found myself needing to stop and research some definitions to make sure i truly understood where the writer was going. In 25 words or less every word and grammar marker counts. The word count forces readers to read each and every word closely and that includes the titles of each piece. I also found that a handful of the stories require a prior knowledge of other literary works and classic stories. I loved Nick Mamatas piece referencing Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”. Again, not every average reader is going to understand why Mamatas’ piece is hilarious, but hopefully it will encourage readers to go beyond Mamata’s 8-word fiction to research Beckett’s work and maybe even read it.

As someone who loves interpreting literature, I can honestly say that these minuscule tales have put my interpretive mind to the test and that they have quenched my thirst for a good read that would accomplish this. The biggest mistakes you can make while reading this anthology are to only read the stories once and to not think about them beyond your first initial thought.

If you’re a serious reader of emotionally deep literature, this anthology will challenge you to develop fascinating interpretations about each piece and, in turn, will tell you more about yourself as a reader than it will about the author as a writer. This anthology will prove to you that the quality of fiction relies not on length, but rather, on the emotional field on which the writer and reader meet.

[Evan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most fun. Highly recommend!

[Chris Bronsk · Rating 2 out of 5]

The suggestive, nuanced world of flash fiction shrinks in this collection of hint fiction, micro-shorts of twenty-five words or less. Twenty five words, even these days, isn't room to say much: maybe a long text message, but still a short grocery list. Yet, as editor Robert Swartwood says in his able and aptly succinct introduction, twenty-five words is enough, in true hint fiction, to create a complete world. Not a complete story, with a denatured beginning, middle, and end, but "complete by standing by itself as its own little world." A little world, indeed, but perhaps one seen through a pinhole camera, as in Amber Whitley's "One More Toast":

Light shimmers off vodka and stale sweat; a baby cries in the background. "Na zdorovye." At the door, a knock.

Or Ty Miller's "A Dignified Purpose":

She loved to steal spoons. She didn't need them; she just enjoyed having a hundred tiny silver mirrors to see what no one else could."

Like pinhole camera photographs, these miniature worlds stretch and bend at the edges, suggesting, in their distortion, a clarity about our perceptions of reality. The best stories in this collection do that. They invite us, in their brevity, to consider a number of imminent possibilities, as in Bob Thurber's "Shipwrecked":

After we buried the captain, we salvaged the Victrola. It worked, though the mahogany was ruined. Half of us put on dresses. And we danced.

But often, the compressed space of twenty-five words seems to contort the writers' desire to tell a tale into a perversion, a world viewed not through a lens but a keyhole, as in Jenn Alandy's "Checking In":

His wife calls while we are in the hotel room. "Yeah, I'm enjoying my time without the kids," he says. I stare at my feet.

Or, worse, down the barrel of a gun, as in Max Barry's "Blind Date":

She walks in and heads turn. I'm stunned. This is my setup? She looks sixteen. Course, it's hard to tell, through a scope.

So, as with all miniatures, these hint fictions offer us a distinct, sometimes revealing, always contrived vantage point. But the best are those which are less crammed, when the edge of the world they wish to pull down or twist reminds us of the pleasures of voyeurism, not thoughts that could—and should—get us arrested.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had never heard of flash fiction or micro fiction or any of that other stuff before I read this little book. Hint fiction is apparently a new concept made popular by Robert Swartwood, the editor. He hosted a contest in which people had to submit stories that were 25 words or less with the full impact of a regular-sized story. He says “a story should do four basic things: obviously it should tell a story; it should be entertaining; it should be thought-provoking; and, if done well enough, it should invoke an emotional response.” I thought this was a pretty cool idea, and I enjoyed reading this anthology. Most of the stories do fit into that criterion, but there were definitely some that I didn’t think had enough influence to be included. The whole notion of writing such short stories does remind me a bit of Twitter though, which I despise. It’s just a bunch of people vying for everyone else’s attention, writing the most stupid, mundane shit that ever runs through their minds, hoping desperately that someone will talk to them and reassure them that they’re important. But now I’m rambling. I’ll just include some of the stories I liked best:

“Through the Tiny Windows” by Barry Napier
When they opened the cadaver, they found a house. A couple argued inside. There was rhythm to their words, like the beating of a heart.

“That Moment” by Jack Ketchum
The old cat blinked once, focused. Then was lost to her forever.

“Pushover” by Nicky Drayden
He shoves me aside to get a better view. I never fight back. He’s worn me down, weaker than that railing at the canyon’s rim.

“Philip” by Jason Rice
The sound of breaking glass got Philip out of bed, and then he remembered he was no longer in love with his wife.

“Mein Führer” by David Joseph
By now I’ve burned more pages than I’ve read.

“Art Alone Endures” by William J. Brazill
The Art League had a competition for artists to depict the future. By accident Bogdan included a blank canvas among his submissions. It won.

[Emily · Rating 1 out of 5]

Interesting concept and, because of the forced brevity, often very poetic. My biggest complaint is that most of these stories were either depressing or creepy. I can handle reading some depressing stories, mingled with uplifting or funny ones, but the ratio was very skewed. Also, while it kept my interest, it is hard to compare a short (even if well written) thought with a complete book (hense, the 2 stars). Plus, the book is really short, I think it could have used more stories...maybe some happy ones?

With that being said, as I have tried to write a "Hint Fiction" myself, I am beginning to understand that it is no simple task. It takes skill to paint the biggest picture possible with the fewest perfect strokes.

Here are my favorites:

The Time Before the Last (Marcus Sakey)
He held her crepe-paper hand and summoned an autumn day, sepia and smoke, and dancing, and music that sounded nothing like beeping of machines.

The Empty Nest (Madeline Mora-Summonte)
My wife curls toward me, a comma forcing a pause. Her body is hers. Again. The emptiness settles between us. We listen to it breathe.

Cure (Kevin Hosey)
Triumphant, Dr. Masuyo held the frail child. After years, he finally had a cure. Outside, the sun warm Hiroshima. And then he saw the flash.

Trust (Don Lee)
At the party, he tells her he's a painter, meaning of houses. She misunderstands, assumes he's an artist. Harmless, he thinks.

Through Tiny Windows (Barry Napier)
When they opened the cadaver, they found a house. A couple argued inside. There was a rhythm to ther words, like the beating of a heart.

[Marzi Margo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to the helpful maps and knowledgeable staff at the Marriott-Wardman Park Hotel in D.C., my first AWP experience ended up consisting of significantly fewer panels than I'd intended, but that's perfectly okay considering how many other wonderful things happened over the course of those three days in February. One panel that I did manage to make it to was the one on this nifty little anthology, "Hint Fiction: An anthology of stories in 25 words or fewer." It featured editor Robert Swartwood and contributors Michael Martone, Daniel A. Olivas, Randall Brown, and Roxane Gay, all of whom are geniuses and all of whom provided great insight on the topics of brevity, story, constriction, space--the list could go on for a while. During the Q&A session, I managed to articulate myself for once and ask the panelists something decent. You can read about it in Gay's review of Davis Schneiderman's "Blank: A Novel" on HTMLGIANT.

Anyway, to keep the rest of this "review" brief, I love this anthology for a multitude of reasons--how it pushes, how it creates tension, how it pivots some conceptions about writing and gives a second wind to others. In short, it is a miniature collection that walks taller in a few thousand words total than certain novels I've read can with a downright gargantuan word count.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was so inspired by this little anthology of stories told in 25 words or fewer that I decided to do a "hint review" Not quite sure how good it will come out but here we go:

---------------------------------------------
All of these stories have a sock-it-to-you quality that you may or may not get upon the first read through.
---------------------------------------------

Ok, so not the greatest review I ever wrote, but it just goes to show how hard it is to write something meaningful in such a limited space with a limited word count. I'm going to work on my own hint fiction and see if I can come up with something better. If I can, I will post it in the writing section of my goodreads page, so be on the lookout! Only time will tell.

[Eric T. Voigt · Rating 5 out of 5]

"It should be complete by standing by itself as its own little world." That's the editor's statement on what these short short stories should do. That's basically how I feel about all the books I read or movies and shows I watch. Most of these stories manage to do that, which is a sight to behold for sure. What a cute idea. A favorite, dark story by Kevin Hosey: "Triumphant, Dr. Masuyo held the frail child. After years, he finally had a cure. Outside, the sun warmed Hiroshima. And then he saw the flash."

[Jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I confess--I chose the book b/c it's short. I'd not been reading much and thought the sense of accomplishment would get me back into one of my better habits.

This anthology, if that's what one calls a colection of one and two line stories can be read in 30 minutes, but can last much longer if you let your imagination run wild. The power of suggestion + imagination leads to a great result.

[Lindsay · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a grad student who finds the prospect of writing thousands and thousands of words to be truly terrifying, this anthology illustrates the power of brevity and invites swift reading (and rereading). Inside the small, thin, pale-minty exterior dwells the potential for inspiration enough to fill volumes.


If you liked David Levithan's The Lover's Dictionary, Swartwood's collection should appeal greatly.

Read, friends, and enjoy.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun little books of stories of 25 words or less. Some stories were breathtaking. Some stories I didn’t get. Some stories were just okay. I read it in less than an hour. I’ll will probably revisit many of the stories again. Certainly I will use this idea as a writing assignment in my classes.

[Dona's Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hello all my fellow readers and writers, I'm going to tell you today what I like and don't like about this hand-sized anthology of 25-word stories. I've been pushing myself lately to write smaller and smaller stories, so I've been reading as many examples as I can get my hands on. I started with Micro Fiction: An Anthology of Fifty Really Short Stories, and I was hooked. Then I found this tiny volume.

Here's what I liked and didn't like about Hint Fiction:

Likes:

1. This book is packed with excellent examples of the form. I don't only recommend this book for people who want to read good very short fiction, but also for writers who want to learn better how to execute the form. I used so many of the pieces in this book for my write short journal, so I could study and model the techniques later.

2. There are tons of stories in this tiny book. And yet, since only one tiny story is on each page, it's a very fast read. So, if you're using it for studying, you get a lot of material here. And if you're reading for pleasure, despite getting lots of stories, it's a very pleasurable reading experience.

Don't Likes:

1. Sometimes these anthologies turn into popularity contests, and this one did. You'll noticed contributions from some pretty big names in this tiny volume. You may also notice that some of those contributions are among the most humdrum. While I read some of these disappointing pieces from very famous people, I wondered how many brilliant stories from unknown writers might have made it instead, but didn't.

And that's it! This is a great book, I hope you all enjoy it. Stay safe and happy reading!

*Edit 4.25.21

*Bought this book from another vendor.

I had already read and reviewed Swartwood's Hint Fiction on Goodreads before I became intensely interested in reading and writing poetry. At the time, I viewed everything through a fiction-writing lens, and that colored my opinion of this book at the time. I needed to reread this book, and to rewrite this review from a more holistic lens, so this bit of review reaches for that.

Poetry shares a number of traits with tiny fictions like hint fiction (25 words or less), such as use of form to describe meaning, allusion and reference, symbolism, and of course, economy of language, such as in Jane Hammons's "The Land with No Air" (p39) in which two instances of"air" and one of "heir" trade their traditional meanings back and forth along the context of the narrative line. The motion is gorgeous, and at one point cinches the ends of the stories to the middle in a powerful thrust. Carefully contracting language allows for such motion, such power, in a small space.

The way the narratives curve around the shape of the poems or the smallness of the tiny fictions is also similar and lends them a similar beauty. They cast similar shadows. Consider Michael Kelly's "3000 Gray Balloons in a Bright Blue Sky": "That morning he was weightless. At the station, he smelled ash. Later, reaching for dust-caked limbs, he floated away, squinting against the sky's brilliance." The fictional form just barely contains this piece, which is only loosely connected anyway to it's own narrative. I get the feeling this fiction could break loose and fly into poetic form any moment. Perhaps it already is -- what stops us from labeling this stunning piece, "prose poetry?" Only that it matters little whether it is poetry or tiny fiction. We must merely acknowledge, I think, that these two forms hold hands.

Another beautiful piece from inside is Robley Wilson's "The Mall" (p83): "What he liked best about the affair was not the shopping, but parting the tissue wrap to remove the clothing that had first enticed her."

As with any anthology I've read, there are editor selections that leave me wondering. Many of these tiny fictions rely on wit for the success of their story turns; hint fictions of this formula have an obvious sound and structure. Several pieces of this type in Hint Fiction were head scratchers -- I was left questioning if the wit flew over my head or never landed to begin with. For instance, consider Noel Sloboda's "Divorce Papers" (p86): "When she gave me the homemade coupons, she insisted they were just for fun: one for a night of lovemaking, one for breakfast in bed." I can't figure for all the money in the land what makes this is clever. Can you?

Now, a clever story is Gay Degani's "Betrayal" (p98): "Her husband left because of guilt. Not because of anything he had done, but because of what had been done to her by her father."

For the "Love & Hate" section, Swartwood must have received hundreds (at least) of submissions ranging in genre and narrative type. But A large portion of the stories included in this section of the anthology are similar to each other in topic and execution. On both my readings, deviations from Swartwood's obvious preferences almost immediately jumped out as my favorites in this section. I love the logical and simplistic "Engagement" (p109) by Tara Deal and the jarring and beautiful "Reunion" (p99) by Ann Harlemann. Why aren't there more stories like these two and fewer stories with long-lost twins marrying each other (p108), and dead beat parents hating their side-piece twenty years too late (p106), and the piles of people generally having sex they aren't supposed to be having? Page numbers abound on that last one. This is all so cliche and boring. A good writer can freshen up elicit sex in 25 words, but I'm talking about the ones who didn't.

One who did is Robin Rozanski with "Tongue" (p131): "Excuse me?
Tongue, he repeated. Tongue the notes.
She replayed the etude. The result was so obvious it seemed obscene. Unnecessary. An excess of separation."
What a successful reframing of the sexual act, and a gripping hint fiction, as a result. Nothing cliche about that.

The last section of this anthology, called This & That, is doubtlessly the best. Fewer of the stories rely for their success, logic, and/or narritive completion on that maudlin trick ending. I found in This & That a lot of truly brilliant tiny fictions, like "Lucky" (p143), "Witness" (p142), "Dickie" (p139), "Free Enterprise" (p137), "Assimilation" (p145), "Telling" (p146), "Hope" (pg 147), and so many more. It seems much of the brilliance in the anthology project settle into this section.

With the exception of Jack Kilborn's excercise in sanism on pg 154 under the title of "Chuck," this anthology is basically great. I definitely recommend this book for other poets; I think you all can learn a few tricks here. I also think general readers of all kinds of fiction will enjoy these tiny fictions.
One who did is Robin Rozanski with "Tongue" (p131): "Excuse me?
Tongue, he repeated. Tongue the notes.
She replayed the etude. The result was so obvious it seemed obscene. Unnecessary. An excess of separation."
What a successful reframing of the sexual act, and a gripping hint fiction, as a result. Nothing cliche about that.

The last section of this anthology, called This & That, is doubtlessly the best. Fewer of the stories rely for their success, logic, and/or narritive completion on that maudlin trick ending. I found in This & That a lot of truly brilliant tiny fictions, like "Lucky" (p143), "Witness" (p142), "Dickie" (p139), "Free Enterprise" (p137), "Assimilation" (p145), "Telling" (p146), "Hope" (pg 147), and so many more. It seems all the brilliance in the anthology project settle into this section.

With the exception of Jack Kilborn's excercise in sanism on pg 154 under the title of "Chuck," this anthology is basically great. I definitely recommend this book for other poets; I think you all can learn a few tricks here. I also think general readers of all kinds of fiction will enjoy these tiny fictions.

[Colin Cox · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the introduction to Hint Fiction, Robert Swartwood offers several interesting ideas when attempting to frame Hint Fiction (also called short or micro-fiction) as an aesthetic. He writes, "Hint Fiction should not be complete by it having a beginning, middle, and end. Instead it should be complete by standing by itself as its own little world" (28). On the following page, he adds, "Hint Fiction is an exercise in brevity, with the writer trying to affect the reader in as few words as possible" (29). The contradiction is striking. When we consider worlds and the act of "world building," we often think of writers like Tolkien and Martin writing, at times, weighty tomes with no end in sight. Part of what makes these world-building exercises so affecting is the breadth, size, and scope of the projects. Presumably, the size of the project correlates with the size of a reader's affective response.

But what Swartwood suggests antagonizes these assumptions. How, for example, does a well-chosen word produce similar affective responses to a novel or novel series that exhaustively builds worlds? Can a single word, or, more accurately, a small collection of words, affect a reader in ways analogous to a 900-page fantasy novel? While proper novelists use subtle, indirect means to communicate ideas to readers, they do not hint in the ways the stories in Hint Fiction hint. But this is one of those moments when form dictates content. With Hint Fiction, an author's ability to hint effectively necessitates the brevity the form requires. In short, Hint Fiction operates as a reminder that content follows form.

For the anthology itself, it is, as most anthologies are, good at times, bad at times, and mediocre at times. The second section, "Love & Hate," is my favorite. Ben White's Perseus," Don Lee's "Trust," and Robin Hollis's "Chaste" are excellent examples of the form in action.

[Matt Knox · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not sure if the problem is with the medium itself or how our authors tended to approach it, but I found this largely eye-roll inducing. It tends to harken back to the supposed origin of this concept: Hemingway's famous six-worder, "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." (This "story" was not, in fact, written by Hemingway.) I very much dislike this "story". It relies on leaps of the imagination and cheap drama. The same is true of most of the stories in this collection. (I enjoy the comedic twists of r/twosentencehorror, so maybe it's not intrinsic to the medium.) Only a few really stood out. Here's my personal favorite:

Shipwrecked - Bob Thurber
After we buried the captain, we salvaged the Victrola. It worked, though the mahogany was ruined. Half of us put on dresses. And we danced.

[Theresa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like very short fiction and this is an example of fiction that must be 25 words or less. According to Swartwood hint fiction must meet four criteria: should tell a story; be entertaining; be thought-provoking and evoke an emotional response. Some of the stories in the collection met those criteria; others did not, in my opinion. Here is one of my favorites: Cure by Kevin Hosey. "Triumphant, Dr. Masuyo held the frail child. After years, he finally found a cure. Outside. the sun warmed Hiroshima. And then he saw the flash." Here is another one I liked: Peanut Butter by Camille Esses. "He was allergic. She pretended not to know." The collection is uneven. Some of the stories are brilliant and others are nonsensical.

[cici ♡ · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars! Finished this one at my local bookstore. So this is a collection of short paragraphs with 25 or less words that tells us a story.

these are some of my fave hint fiction!

why i don’t keep a daily planner by stace budzko
pregnancy test by jennifer haddock
donor by j.a. konrath
public mourning by mercedes m. yardley
peanut butter by camille esses
playing with matches by kathleen a. ryan
the endless mystery by peter straub
the widow’s first year by joyce carol oates
knock knock joke by nick arvin
noir surprise by ken bruen
philip by jason rice

[coco's reading · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hint Fiction is an anthology of stories all told in 25 words or fewer, with titles often acting as part of the stories themselves. Editor Robert Swartwood describes the book as "an exercise in brevity, with the writer trying to affect the reader in as few words as possible." If you tend to write longer short fiction and struggle with condensing like I do, reading this and trying your hand at hint fiction could prove useful!

[judebug · Rating 2 out of 5]

WOW this needed some serious editing

the lack of consistency between the formatting of the stories is uncomfortable

some of these are poems, some are the beginning of a chapter in a novel, some read like quick jokes or tweets, most are just boring and predictable. and theres a few gross ones in there too.

there's like 5 total bangers that feel whole and dont seem like they're trying to trick me or play me

eh ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Carol Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though it seems impossible, many famous and not-so-famous authors have written stories in twenty-five words or fewer. I just happened to notice this while I was volunteering at the library. It looked fascinating so I took it home and devoured it in an hour or so. Visually it's a very cute book and I really enjoyed it! Recommended!