One characteristic is simplicity. For example, 'The light went out. Hope died.' It uses very few words to convey a big emotion. They often rely on the reader's own imagination to fill in the gaps.
One characteristic is that they use basic vocabulary. In stories like 'The boy ran. He saw a ball. He played with it.' The words are common for kids to know. Also, they are short enough to hold a young child's attention without getting them bored or confused. This allows kids to quickly grasp the whole story and maybe even retell it easily.
They are concise. For example, they often focus on a single spooky moment like a sudden noise or an unexplained sighting.
They often rely on implication. Since they don't have much space to be explicit, they leave a lot to the reader's imagination. The reader has to fill in the gaps, like in the story 'For sale: baby shoes, never worn.', where the reason for the shoes not being worn is left unsaid.
They are often concise. For example, they can quickly create a sense of unease with just a few words, like 'The doll's eyes followed me.' It doesn't need a lot of description to be scary. The simplicity makes the horror more immediate.
They are also very good at creating a sense of place. In these short stories, whether it's a spooky forest in 'The Man in the Black Suit' or a desolate island in 'Survivor Type', the setting becomes an important part of the horror or the overall mood. And the language is always engaging, drawing the reader into the story quickly without a lot of extraneous fluff.
I'm not sure which specific 'shortest sad story' you're referring to. There could be many short sad stories. Maybe it's about a lost love in just a few words, like 'We met. We loved. We parted.'
Well, the 'Hemingway shortest sad story' which is 'For sale: baby shoes, never worn' manages to evoke a great deal of sadness. Just think about it. There are these baby shoes, brand new, and yet they're for sale. It could mean the baby didn't make it, or some other tragic event occurred that meant the shoes were no longer needed. It shows Hemingway's great skill in using minimal words to maximum emotional effect.
The main characteristic is their brevity. They are very short, yet they manage to tell a complete story or at least convey a strong message.
One shortest sad story could be 'I waited. You never came.' It's short but conveys the deep disappointment and loneliness of being stood up by someone you were expecting.
One interpretation could be 'They forgot me.' It shows a sense of abandonment and loneliness. When people who were once important in your life forget about you, it can be really sad. You feel like you no longer matter to them.