For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn

The six-word story model (made famous by someone other than Ernest Hemingway) is yet another useful and enabling constraint. On the one hand, it can be the idea. On the other, a means of getting to the essence of one.

Even if the baby shoes story wasn't Hemingway's idea, the legend paints the challenge of efficiency. How can we engage an audience with the fewest words?

Similar to the LinkedIn headline or Twitter bio, the four-frame cartoon, the log line, the haiku -- the six-word story model forces a curious and potent brevity. How much insight and drama and intrigue can you pack in such a tight space?

To start, can you move beyond merely listing keywords and attributes? A search algorithm tasked with the baby shoes idea might suggest: Shoes, Infant, Like New, Unisex, Bargain. If our audience is task-minded shoppers, perhaps we've served them well.

But this is a story model. We're looking for a bit more than closing the sale. In fact, the keyword approach doesn't work precisely because the story has already been seen or heard elsewhere — that's why the audience is trying to close. They already bought the idea.So, what verbs, what tense, what perspective informs your choices? Who will we infer is telling this story? When did the story take place? What's our relationship to that story?

Baby shoes happened in the past. To someone not us. We can infer a tragedy or a simple purchasing error. Storyteller unknown. And yet — those six words draw us in.

Which six words will draw people into your idea?