Why I Wrote Love in Brief
How long can a story be? Some can be hundreds of thousands of words. Others can be as short as two sentences!
In early 2022, I was looking at random stuff online when I came across two-sentence horror stories. I decided to try writing some and quite enjoyed this different approach to writing stories. Eventually, I set myself a goal: I would write 200 and self-publish them as an e-book, Terror in Brief.
Having enjoyed writing very short stories, I thought about releasing some more, this time focusing on another genre. Even though I’m not a romance fan, I settled on this genre for my second collection of two-sentence stories. I figured I could rise to the challenge and produce 200 two-sentence stories all about love, relationships, dating, being single and everything in between. That’s how Love in Brief came about.
Love in Brief
The two-sentence romance stories are split into three sections:
‘Single and Dating’
‘Relationships Thriving’
‘Relationships Failing’
Writing Two-Sentence Stories
There’s a knack to writing two-sentence stories. When writing a story of normal length, you come up with an idea and expand on it. You can’t do this with a story that’s just two sentences long. What you have to do is come up with a scenario and condense it as much as you can. There’s no room for fluff or excess description. You have to keep each two-sentence story as short as possible but as long as necessary.
One of my favourites is ‘Young Love', which is story #4.
The sceptic watched the teenagers frolicking about in the park. He gave it a year.
You’ve got a loved-up couple enjoying their time. A sceptic (could well be me!) is watching them and, being much more experienced than the young pair, he reckons their relationship doesn’t have a good chance of lasting. In the end, nothing happens because, as the story goes, the sceptic is just thinking to himself. We don’t see him walk up to the couple and say something like, ‘Enjoy it while it lasts’. He’s just sitting there, observing others and musing to himself. The story doesn’t have a definitive ending, but when it’s just two sentences long, it doesn’t need one.
Why Call It Love in Brief?
The first instalment in my ‘Two-Sentence Stories’ series is Terror in Brief. For the second, romance-genre instalment, I decided to keep the same title format. Deciding on a title was simply a matter of replacing ‘Terror’ with a suitable word to sum up romance. ‘Love’ is the perfect word for this. There was no competition.
Why Split the Stories Into Three Sections?
When writing Terror in Brief, the plan was to present all 200 two-sentence horror stories in a random order. There wouldn’t be any logic or sense to the order. Shortly before reaching the target of 200 stories, I decided it would be better to split the collection into a few sections. I think it worked for Terror in Brief, so I did the same for Love in Brief.
The three section titles are quite vague: ‘Single and Dating’, ‘Relationships Thriving’ and ‘Relationships Failing’. I settled on these three because they cover just about every aspect of love/romance. I didn’t want to give them titles that are too specific since each section has upwards of 50 stories in it.
After settling on the three titles, I looked through the stories and assigned a section to each one. This was pretty easy since just about every two-sentence romance story in the collection naturally belongs to a particular section.
Did I arrange each section’s stories in a certain order? No, I didn’t bother. All the stories are standalone and I figured arranging them into three broad categories was enough.
Will There Be Another Instalment?
I’ve got no plans to write any more two-sentence romance stories. The romance genre isn’t my favourite, so it’s not one I’m going to dip into it much in the coming years. That being said, I’m planning to release more instalments in the ‘Two-Sentence Stories’ series:
Terror in Brief, Volume II. Another collection of 200 two-sentence horror stories.
Wonder in Brief. A collection of 200 two-sentence fantasy stories.
Terror in Brief
The two-sentence horror stories are split into four sections:
‘Twisted Individuals’
‘Remorseless Killers’
‘Terrifying Creatures and Wicked Beings’
‘Creepy and Horrific Happenings’
Read Love in Brief If You Haven’t Already
Download Love in Brief and read some very short romance stories. You might enjoy them; you may even find them funny. If you fancy something scarier, check out Terror in Brief too.
Here are the links:
Love in Brief - Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Kobo
Terror in Brief - Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Kobo
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