One Sentence Stories

alexshvartsman · May 28, 2012

A bunch of my friends and I started a crazy contest on Twitter, challenging each other to write long(ish), meaningful stories that are exactly one sentence long.

You can read my entry and links to several others here, and there's still time to write your own!

Our hashtag on Twitter is #1ss

New blog entry: One Sentence Stories (includes a free story!)
http://alexshvartsman.com/2012/05/28/one-sentence-stories/

Project Deadlight · May 28, 2012

I just read yours and don't think I can beat it.

ohthatmomagain · May 28, 2012

Very cool idea.

alexshvartsman · May 28, 2012

Project Deadlight said:
I just read yours and don't think I can beat it.

Thank you! But you don't have to beat it, you can just have fun with it.

zanzjan · May 28, 2012

I only had a few minutes to procrastinate from packing in, but here's what I came up with.

alexshvartsman · May 28, 2012

zanzjan said:
I only had a few minutes to procrastinate from packing in, but here's what I came up with.

Nice I added the link to this from my blog post!

Project Deadlight · May 28, 2012

This was a nice bit of fun! Here is my attempt. http://thewrittenabsurd.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/one-sentence-stories.html

zanzjan · May 28, 2012

Project Deadlight said:
This was a nice bit of fun! Here is my attempt. http://thewrittenabsurd.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/one-sentence-stories.html

Nice! Can I say "perfect last line" if there's only one line? Perfect last line-part, anyway

Project Deadlight · May 29, 2012

zanzjan said:
Nice! Can I say "perfect last line" if there's only one line? Perfect last line-part, anyway

Thanks Zan.

I reckon I may never get another "line-part" compliment again so allow me to bask in this one. It is a great little exercise, isn't it?

faerydancer · May 30, 2012

I decided to play

Here's my entry:

http://digitalinkwell.wordpress.com/2012/05/30/one-sentence-story-dear-kyle/

zanzjan · May 30, 2012

faerydancer said:
I decided to play Here's my entry:

Bwahaha! Great ending!

mhaynes · May 30, 2012

And here is my contribution:

http://michael-haynes.blogspot.com/2012/05/great-uncles-visit-one-sentence-story.html

soapdish · May 30, 2012

Before I read Alex's whole post, I thought it was supposed to be a one *short* sentence story. :tongue

And I was all: :hooray:

Because, you know, I love the microfiction.

But, man. HOLY SMOKE, you guys. I'm not sure I can pull this off or not. I have yet to read all that have been posted yet. But I'd like to *tentatively* participate, too.

Is there a deadline on this? Like a monthly blog thing, or...

alexshvartsman · May 31, 2012

Sealey,

Technically the deadline was Wednesday night, but if you post your #1ss I'll still be happy to link to it!

AndreaGS · May 31, 2012

What a great idea. The entries are killer, too!

soapdish · May 31, 2012

alexshvartsman said:
Sealey,

Technically the deadline was Wednesday night, but if you post your #1ss I'll still be happy to link to it!

Oh, dang! Actually, I think I'll just skip it this time. Maybe you'll do it again. It'll take me at least a week to put one together anyway. Was a bit overambitious to think I could pull anything together right now. I just got excited when I saw how neat it was.

Fun idea. I will be making the reading/commenting rounds!

lorna_w · May 31, 2012

You know, if I still taught creative writing, I'd use this idea as an in-class writing assignment, adding, it must have conflict, two characters or more, come to some sort of end or conclusion. It's useful practice at many levels. Thanks for the interesting links and idea.

soapdish · May 31, 2012

Ooh--nice touch, Lorna. I was thinking a picture prompt might be cool too. What I struggle with is getting started with an idea.

toomanycarbs · Jun 25, 2012

Not sure how I stumbled over here, but glad I did. What fun. Just lost a good half hour to reading the entries.

toomanycarbs · Jun 25, 2012

Soapdish-I love the idea of a picture prompt. Would be so interesting to see the same image interpreted several different ways.

Decker · Sep 16, 2012

I know this is an older post, but I couldn't help but read it and think of Hemingway. My facts are a little shady on this, but basically a journalist challenged him one time to write a story using only six words. He wrote:

"For sale, baby shoes: never used."

Depressing? You bet. But he's still the king.

Ken · Sep 16, 2012

ohthatmomagain said:
Very cool idea.

... qft.

alexshvartsman · Sep 18, 2012

Decker said:
I know this is an older post, but I couldn't help but read it and think of Hemingway. My facts are a little shady on this, but basically a journalist challenged him one time to write a story using only six words. He wrote:

"For sale, baby shoes: never used."

Depressing? You bet. But he's still the king.

Yes, this figured into the Twitter discussion that led to the One Sentence Stories challenge.

I recently thought about this and wondered if it might be fun to write a flash story that expands on Hemingway's prompt. I wonder that's been done yet.

Cornelius Gault · Dec 29, 2012

Is there some reason the entries can't be posted directly in a thread here instead of going somewhere else?

I read a few of the offline examples and I think it is difficult to define what a sentence is. If you can run-on a sentence to 400 words by using ";" and "-'", I don't see the point.

However, limiting the sentence to 30, 40 or 50 words might be something I could get into.

... jus' sayin' ...

DennisB · Jan 31, 2013

Okay, fly in the ointment. Anybody can write 500 or even 1,000 words without a period and call it sentence.

I thought it was something along the lines of Hemmingway's "Baby shoes for sale, never used."

One Sentence Stories

alexshvartsman

Project Deadlight

ohthatmomagain

writing, working, weeping, winning

alexshvartsman

zanzjan

killin' all teh werds

alexshvartsman

Project Deadlight

zanzjan

killin' all teh werds

Project Deadlight

faerydancer

zanzjan

killin' all teh werds

mhaynes

practical experience, FTW

soapdish

writing

alexshvartsman

AndreaGS

soapdish

writing

lorna_w

Hybrid Grump

soapdish

writing

toomanycarbs

toomanycarbs

Decker

Old fish; alligator skin

Ken

alexshvartsman

Cornelius Gault

New writer since 07/2012.

DennisB