Sometime ago I had a brief scurry of posts about the Hemingway one-sentence story. You may remember. You may not.
Something far more interesting in the same vein: the radiant Robyn Bender sent me a link to the One Sentence website (and yes, Robyn, it had indeed escaped my notice). The idea:
One Sentence is about telling your story, briefly. Insignificant stories, everyday stories, or turning-point-in-your-life stories, boiled down to their bare essentials.
The idea was born from a blog entry several years ago that got a million (actually, only 14) responses. “Maybe this will take off more as its own site,” thought I. Let’s see.
You can read a couple pages of submissions in five minutes or so. You can also vote on your favorites (thumbs up or down). Some strike me as the beginning of a longer story, for example:
Because it’s difficult for me to bend, I cleaned the base of the shower with a pot scrubber tied to the bottom of my walking stick.
(Tammii)
If you go over there and find a sentence you really like, would you post it here in the comments? I’m curious about how other people react to them.
You've stumbled across my official website and landed on the front page of my weblog.
I really liked this one:
I said “Hi, I’m your mum” which made him cry so hard, I immediately apologised.
Initially I thought it was about a mother finding her adopted son, then I found the tag that said newborn. I like my original concept better.
I said “Hi, I’m your mum” which made him cry so hard, I immediately apologised.
http://www.onesentence.org/stories/1767/
I cannot see the other comments so I don’t know what’s been posted…. but I’ll try anyways
When I looked in the cot and saw you both snuggled up together in a perfect cuddle, I realised that the bloody cat had been tolerating me until you were born. Cat Lover
test again
Sherryl, That’s what I thought when I first read it, then I was the tags.
I like the sentence, “I rejected Christianity only to acquire the belief that Mars gives a damn about me.”
Ever since my electric toothbrush turned on in my bookbag that morning, I’ve been getting weird looks from people in my English class.
Too funny!
I love this one, don’t know why:
blueberry fist
“My roommate keeps using my towels, so I am slowly depleting her rice.”
Ohhh and this one:
Ella
“I knew the trip to Dublin wasn’t going to turn out as planned when my best friend woke me up in the middle of the night to ask me if the rugby player on the other side of our hostel room was dead.”
I found it cruel that they neither supply pillows nor offer massages in jail.
The story is probably humorous. Or at least the first person is a clueless dip. Or perhaps an autobiography by Leona Helmsley. Maybe all of the above, although I don’t remember that Helmsley had a sense of humor.
Ella said: “We started calling our new neighbor Blackbeard when he installed an actual cannon in his front yard.”
When I read that people are posting non-fiction in one-sentence format, the part that made me think “neat” was that these are returning posters. That is, we are getting an on-line journal, in one-sentence blurbs, of their lives. Well, in so far as the editor/owner of this journal finds their stories worth posting. So I would expect to see a post in March about Blackbeard, or perhaps the cannon, or about the neighbour across the way at whom the cannon aims. Or I would hope to.
It’s interesting. Could one do a daily blog in single sentences? Now *that* appeals to time-crunched me. Thanks for the link.
i really liked this one. it made me lol.
I wore a purple, snakeskin-patterned mumu and a pink hair bow to see “Hairspray” at the movie theatre, but, once I got there, I decided to see “Transformers” instead.
I like this blogging or journaling style, sounds like something i might actually do. Here’s mine for today
Even if we didn’t know her personally the entire community was saddened by her death.
for those curious learn more here http://www.recorder.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=898073&auth=Kim Lunman%2c Staff Writer
Off the first page, this one struck me:
Aaron B
You’d think that the yogurt with the blue lid was blueberry, but that is apparently not the case.
as well as as the one about the cannon in the front yard…
“As a kid dripping in mud, I couldn’t see why bringing four frogs home in a zip lock bag was bad idea.” — Cam
Make it two worms and a frog in a Glad sandwich bag, left in the lunchbox for Mama to find, and that’s my daughter when she was eight. At one point I wouldn’t open her lunchbox inside the house. :)
I like the site, and especially liked the shorter sentences. Less words, more impact.