PB passed on a fun little meme: write a story in six words. It will probably come as no surprise that I’ve fretted over this for more than a week. I want my six-word story to be beautiful and perfect. Unfortunately, this is all I could come up with:

It rained Friday. She went anyway.

I found this exercise fascinating, actually. When given such a severe limitation (“only six words!”), it’s impossible to provide standard story-telling staples, such as “a beginning, a middle, and an end”. (There are exceptions, I suppose, such as the famous, “I came. I saw. I conquered.” Note that in Latin, that phrase actually comprises just three words!)

Articles present another problem. “A” and “the” are wasted words in a situation like this. This makes stories like “the cat chased after the dog” — there are two wasted words there!

As near as I can tell, Caterina started this meme several months ago citing the oft-quoted six-word Hemingway story:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

I don’t normally forward memes, but this time I’ll make an exception to tag Matt, Frykitty, Nicole, Michael, and Rich.

7 Replies to “Six-Word Story”

  1. jenefer says:

    Mother would have loved this. She probably would have done several just for fun. Seems to be a similar exercise to haiku.

  2. I blogged about this back in October. I didn’t have any of my own six-word stories to contribute, but I did relate two of my favorite short-shorts.

  3. ed markowski says:

    two men chopping wood in snow

  4. ed markowski says:

    an unpopped kernal broke his tooth.

  5. ed markowski says:

    an unpopped kernal broke his tooth.

  6. ed markowski says:

    an unpopped kernal broke his tooth.

  7. ed markowski says:

    an unpopped kernal broke his tooth.

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