In a nutshell…

… must be one of Icon’s most overused phrases (he often finds himself pressed for time and needs to make a long story short.) Alene has been reading through a story Icon helped her with a couple of years ago — and she’s wondering if she should edit out some of those nutshells. Icon decided to offer an explanation of the origins of that phrase — on his world, anyway.

Icon’s world never knew anything like our internet. It didn’t have broadcast television or personal telephones either. Communications across even short distances were slow and inconvenient. But people still found ways to have fun, even with telegrams, which many people used the way we use text messaging on this earth. Imagine working for the telegraph company as messenger, pedaling back and forth delivering lines of a knock-knock joke!

One quaint fad involved nutshells. The idea was to crack open a nut carefully, eat the contents, and glue the nutshell back together — with a little story written on a piece of paper inside — like a fortune cookie. The eventually recipient of the nutshell would open the nut and read the story inside. Nutshells were popular hand-made novelties and party favors, and eventually someone started mass-producing fake nutshells which were often freebie giveaways in boxes of cookies. So there was a big demand for very short stories, of one hundred words or less — a story which could fit in a nutshell!

So there you have it. Icon also has a talent for making a short story long….