For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn

This is Ernest Hemingway's infamous six-word short story, supposedly written after a bar room bet with a group of his contemporaries.

It’s also one of the finest examples ever conceived of what I like to call “iceberg storytelling,” where the writer gives the audience a sparse, stripped-down story with just enough information to fill in the details with their imagination.

In the case of this particular story, it forces the audience to imagine the circumstances under which this advertisement was written. It forces them to imagine a miscarriage, a stillbirth, a failed delivery. It forces them to imagine the pain of a grieving mother, selling the shoes because they’re a constant reminder of the child that never was.

All of that from six simple words — For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn

A powerful metaphor to shape your stories

The storytelling metaphor here is simple. With an iceberg, only a small portion of its total mass is visible to the naked eye. The remainder of that mass — the vast majority of it, even — lays beneath the surface of the water.