An exercise, if you will.
There are three individuals who are friends of this journal: Noelle, Mara, and Drew. Drew, I met at the Young Writer's Workshop two years ago. Mara, I went to high school with for several years. Noelle is going to college with me, and also we're dating, which is pretty awesome when I think about it.
To the best of my knowledge, the three people who are my friends here don't know each other, and so you might think that the common thread between them is me. While this is not an entirely unreasonable thought to have, it turns out that it is curiously incorrect. All three people on my friends list have, at times, expressed an interest in writing. Even you, noelle, though you despise writing papers with a passion I don't even pretend to understand.
Most of you are aware that I'm an avid reader of the somethingawful forums. They recently introduced a new subforum, called "The Book Barn," to stop the cluttering up of Post Your Favorite and General Bullshit with threads like "check out this new book I read" and "who's your favorite author?"
In this forum, I found a thread devoted entirely to people's favorite short stories, many of which were already archived in text form on the internet. I also found a link to a truly wonderful page of short, short, fiction.
Stories in only six words.
http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/sixwords.html
There you go. A collection of stories which consist of only six words, written by a variety of authors, some of whom I'm sure you've heard of.
Each of you considers yourself to be a writer, correct? I challenge you to do the same. Write a story in six words. It doesn't have to be funny, it doesn't have to be poetic, it doesn't even have to be good, although probably it will. I'm curious to see what you can come up with.
And, of course, it wouldn't be fair for me to issue a challenge without fulfilling the terms myself. So here are my six word stories for your perusal and critique.
Old man says, "Not dead yet."
"Please, won't you take me back?"
Man botches surgery on self, sues.
Go for it. See if you can come up with something better.
To the best of my knowledge, the three people who are my friends here don't know each other, and so you might think that the common thread between them is me. While this is not an entirely unreasonable thought to have, it turns out that it is curiously incorrect. All three people on my friends list have, at times, expressed an interest in writing. Even you, noelle, though you despise writing papers with a passion I don't even pretend to understand.
Most of you are aware that I'm an avid reader of the somethingawful forums. They recently introduced a new subforum, called "The Book Barn," to stop the cluttering up of Post Your Favorite and General Bullshit with threads like "check out this new book I read" and "who's your favorite author?"
In this forum, I found a thread devoted entirely to people's favorite short stories, many of which were already archived in text form on the internet. I also found a link to a truly wonderful page of short, short, fiction.
Stories in only six words.
http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/sixwords.html
There you go. A collection of stories which consist of only six words, written by a variety of authors, some of whom I'm sure you've heard of.
Each of you considers yourself to be a writer, correct? I challenge you to do the same. Write a story in six words. It doesn't have to be funny, it doesn't have to be poetic, it doesn't even have to be good, although probably it will. I'm curious to see what you can come up with.
And, of course, it wouldn't be fair for me to issue a challenge without fulfilling the terms myself. So here are my six word stories for your perusal and critique.
Old man says, "Not dead yet."
"Please, won't you take me back?"
Man botches surgery on self, sues.
Go for it. See if you can come up with something better.