Tornado Comedy

Hello, everybody, I shall begin with one of my six-word stories: Tornado Comedy The atheist shelters in the church. The six-word story is a common writing exercise. It’s a lesson in being as concise as possible. There are a few best-selling anthologies of six-word stories. And there’s a website dedicated to six-word memoirs. The most famous six-word story was supposedly written by Hemingway but that’s probably an apocryphal attribution. Here is that story: For Sale. Baby shoes. Never worn. That’s a tragic tale told in miniature. These six-worders are a cool hybrid. They work in a strict three-act structure, like screenplays. They are often in iambic pentameter, simply because of the word requirements and the absence of adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions. So the six-word story is very much like poetry. The six-worders also rely heavily on that strategic pause between the second and third act. In poetry, that pause is called the caesura. In stand-up comedy, that pause is called comedic timing (Henny Youngman’s “Take my wife…please” is a famous example of the pause that gives the joke its punchline). So, hey, with all that in mind, here’s one more of my six-worders: Humans My ex-wife. My brother. They eloped. So, as a community exercise, I’d love to see you write six-word stories and post them in the comments. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit shermanalexie.substack.com/subscribe