: Evoking happiness in a very short story Hemingway has the canonical very short story: For sale: baby shoes, never worn. This piece manages to evoke a strong emotion of sadness. Wired has a

Vote Up Vote Down

The micro-stories you list all reside on a significant amount of wordplay and context, which combine with our expectations to instill a primal response. Fear, sadness, and relief are all very simple to evoke by way of a few concise images. Happiness, however, is more difficult, since a feeling of happiness requires some empathy for the characters to be more than a simple declaration.

The issue is really one of basic human psychology. We are hard wired to be most empathic to others when something is WRONG. Absent turmoil, we have a natural kind of pseudo-autism, where we stop feeling as much for the other person and would rather turn ourselves to our own issues.

You're about half right that they work by deceiving our expectations. In actually, the rely upon our expectations to fill in the rest of the story being told. And truth be told, I'm not sure it's even POSSIBLE to feel empathic happiness strongly. Especially if you want to invoke it artificially via a story and not an expression of relationship.

Sadness is easy:

He proposed last night, though not to me.

Relief is harder:

He proposed last night, though not to me. Thank God.

Happiness is a hallmark card.

He proposed last night, and she said yes!

(0)