From epics to six words.
Length is only one way writing takes shape. Some labels describe form, some describe genre, and some describe subject or effect. Here is the family tree, with six-word stories placed where they actually belong.
Edited by Doug Weller · Editorial standards
Published and editorially reviewed 29 July 2026
Four broad families. Many forms.
A literary form describes how a work is built. Genre describes the kind of world, subject or emotional promise it offers. A six-word story is therefore a form, while horror, romance, crime and fantasy are genres it can inhabit.
Fiction
Invented narrative in forms ranging from novels and short stories to flash fiction and six-word stories.
Non-fiction
Writing grounded in fact or lived experience, including essays, biography, memoir and the six-word memoir.
Poetry
Writing organized through line, image, sound and rhythm, including sonnets, haiku, limericks, couplets and six-word poems.
Comedy & jokes
Comic writing built around expectation, timing, misdirection and payoff, from shaggy-dog stories to six-word jokes.
Stories, memoirs and jokes.
Fiction narrows through short narrative forms. Non-fiction narrows through life writing and memoir. Comic storytelling follows a different path, compressing setup and payoff until only the joke's essential machinery remains.
Invented narrative
- FictionInvented narrative
- Prose fictionFiction written in sentences and paragraphs
- Short storyA complete, concentrated narrative
- Flash fictionUsually fewer than 1,000 words
- MicrofictionExtremely short fiction, often under 300 words
- Six-word storyExactly six words with narrative movement
Lived experience
- Non-fictionWriting grounded in fact or lived experience
- Life writingTrue writing shaped around a life
- Autobiography and memoirA whole life or selected experience
- MemoirMemory shaped around a subject or moment
- Very short memoirA compressed piece of lived experience
- Six-word memoirExactly six words about a true life
Expectation and payoff
- Comic storytellingHumour shaped through a narrated situation
- Shaggy-dog storyA deliberately long comic tale with an elaborate payoff
- Short jokeA compact setup followed by a punchline
- One-linerSetup and payoff compressed into one sentence
- Six-word jokeExpectation, misdirection and payoff in exactly six words
The arrows show relationships, not compulsory stages. The joke ladder is a spectrum of compression: a shaggy-dog story is deliberately expansive, while a six-word joke strips comedy down to expectation, misdirection and payoff.
Funny story or six-word joke?
A funny six-word story creates a comic situation or change. A six-word joke can be even leaner: it primarily exists to set an expectation and overturn it with a punchline. Many pieces do both. Read six-word comedy or submit a six-word joke.
Poetry is organized differently.
Poems are not simply short stories made shorter. Their forms are shaped by lines, rhythm, rhyme, image, voice and inherited conventions rather than narrative length alone.
Epic
A large-scale story told in verse, traditionally involving heroic or cultural events.
Sonnet
A tightly structured lyric form, often using a turn in thought or feeling.
Ode
A poem of praise or concentrated reflection addressed to a subject.
Ballad
A story told in patterned verse, often designed to be remembered or sung.
Haiku
A Japanese poetic form adapted in English, commonly using a 5–7–5 syllable pattern, though syllable counting alone does not define it.
Limerick
A comic form with an AABBA rhyme scheme and a distinctive bouncing rhythm.
Couplet
Two successive lines, often sharing rhyme, rhythm or a complete thought.
Six-word poem
A miniature poem shaped by image, sound, rhythm or feeling; it need not contain a narrative event.
Where six-word forms fit
A six-word story belongs to microfiction, the broad family of very short narrative prose. It is distinguished by an exact six-word constraint, not by one subject, mood or style.
It can also overlap with other forms. A true six-word story may be a memoir. A lyrical one may also work as a poem. A comic one may resemble a joke. The decisive question is narrative: does something happen, change, become threatened or get newly understood?
A six-word joke is judged by a different but equally demanding test: do the six words create an expectation and then deliver a comic turn? Narrative helps, but a complete setup-and-payoff mechanism is what makes it a joke rather than merely a funny sentence. A six-word poem instead makes image, sound, rhythm or association central.
That is why six words can contain romance, horror, fantasy, crime, science fiction or an intimate piece of literary fiction. Form supplies the six-word frame. Genre supplies the reader’s expectation.
Form, genre, mode and subject
How the writing is constructed: novel, short story, haiku, limerick, memoir or six-word story.
The kind of story promised: romance, horror, fantasy, crime, science fiction or comedy.
How it behaves or feels: satire, tragedy, suspense, wordplay, darkness or hope.
What it explores: family, work, grief, identity, war, childhood, aging or love.