The Story In Three Pictures

Every story is at heart a sequence of pictures. Three pictures are enough for the smallest story. The first picture shows things in their normal place. The second picture shows something going wrong. The third picture shows what happens next. Storytellers in Lahore, in Karachi, in every village in Sindh have known this for a thousand years. You already know it too. You just have not used it on purpose yet.

Try a small story. Picture one. A cup of chai sits on a small table near a charpai. Steam rises. A cat sleeps below. Picture two. The cat stands up, the table shakes, the cup tips, chai spills across the table and starts to drip on the floor. Picture three. A child comes with a piece of cloth, kneels down, and wipes the floor while the cat hides behind the curtain. Three drawings. One small life. The reader laughs without anyone telling a joke.

There is a hidden rule. The first picture and the third picture together must show that the world has changed. The chai is gone. The floor is wet. The cat is hiding. Even the calm at the end is not the same calm as the beginning. A good three picture story leaves the reader with a small new fact about the world. The cat now knows the table can fall. The child now knows the cat is the kind of creature that knocks things over. Tomorrow chai will be placed somewhere else.