Six words

Why don't conversations come with prereaders?

(Unrelated but important: Bad Horse is trying to assemble a scholarship for FIMFiction authors to attend the Clarion writing conference. If you're interested in going, or want to encourage more quality in your ponyfic, make the clicky.)

Comments

[Eakin]

Conversations are like speed fic no spellcheck writing challenges. Half the fun is looking back in horror at what you've just written and wondering what the hell you were thinking

[GhostOfHeraclitus]

Oh dear. That doesn't sound good. Doesn't sound good at all.

Hope it turns out for the best, whatever the difficulty may be.

[horizon]

817449
Thanks for the good wishes. It's … ergh. She's not even upset, you know? She's disappointed. It's one of those supremely frustrating situations where I did the best I could, the best I knew how, and it was okay, but … not enough. Things will work themselves out, but I can't help but feel like if I had found a way to throw more than just me at the problem I created, they'd work out better. And that stings. In some ways worse than failing.

817424
Which is great for most conversations! Ways to play with words, stretch yourself in a low-pressure environment. But make a speed-fic no-spellcheck writing challenge, say, part of a job interview, and you're sitting there riffing off of "Twilight Sparkle solves a problem" and somehow you ended up with a story in which she throws Zecora off a cliff, and it made perfect sense at the time, and all the words flowed together, yet when you step back and take a look what the hell sort of broken are you … yeah, I guess it might be amusing in hindsight?

[horizon]

Also, now I'm darkly wondering whether this would count as a complete story were it fiction, á là the six-worder commonly attributed to Hemingway. The notion that "For sale: baby shoes, never worn" is a complete story because "it has a beginning, a middle, and an end" (as is commonly quoted) seems to me bunk — but it does resolve a conflict it introduces through implication, and conflict + resolution seems a much more sturdy hook on which to hang "this is a story."

[GhostOfHeraclitus]

817611
Best of luck to you, my friend. I don't know the details, and I respect that you don't wish or should share them, but I wish you well. It'll get better, don't you fret. We are all, at times, foolish and of quicker tongue than wit. She, whoever she is, must see that.

817676
I love ultra-short stories. There was a collection of six-word SF stories (well by SF authors, anyway) I ran across. A few groaners, but I really liked a few:

Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time
- Alan Moore

Internet “wakes up?” Ridicu -
no carrier.
- Charles Stross

Longed for him. Got him. Shit.
- Margaret Atwood

But my favorite, that actually gave me chills and still does is:

Epitaph: Foolish humans never escaped Earth.
- Vernor Vinge

It's fascinating how far you can compress writing and still retain meaning, isn't it?

It's hard to do, though. Very hard. Six word ponyfic. How would that work?

Trapped between light, dark -- Twilight dawns.

Cold. Seething. Stone doesn't scream. Yet.

...I don't think I'm doing this right.

[horizon]

> It's hard to do, though. Very hard. Six word ponyfic.

No kidding! I think the closest we've thus far gotten is Skywriter's infamous 17-word ship (to which I contributed a 9-word sequel). I'll see if I can step up to your example and add one, though:

Celestia drinks her millionth cup alone.

[El Dante]

818581

Can I try?

She left the Doctor a muffin.

And just let that take you where it will.

[LittleSallyDigby]

Students come. Students go. Memories remain.
---
Find life. Watch it grow. Repeat.
---
Even baby dragons grow up eventually.
---
Secretly, Mom is still a cactus.
---
Cadence, Armor: patches on unfinished timeline.
---
Discord won't let Fluttershy grow old.
---
Scootaloo closed her eyes and jumped.
---
Spike wants; can't have; stays small.
---
I think the real trick is going to be writing one with a happy ending.

[Smirkythread]

Lets see what I can come up with.........shit, this is hard. Give me a a moment.......hmmmmmmm...

Okay, how about this;

It's nice not needing to smile.

In case this was an epic fail this was about Pinkie and how she believes that she needs to smile for her friends, even if it's just to make them think they don't have to be worried about her. That's the impression I get from her anyway.

[Bradel]

Gah. I was thinking about trying my hand at this six-word-story thing, but...

981776

Scootaloo closed her eyes and jumped.

This beats all of my ideas. By a lot.

Wow.

[horizon]

981776 981797 983330
Good stuff. Can I ask what's drawing attention to this two-month-old blog post? Three comments in 24 hours is an unusual spike.

Another:

A surprised Dinky inherited Mom's telescope.

[LittleSallyDigby]

I went looking around your stories and blog after the April Fool's PFV post, and this blog post had an interesting title. After I read Skywriter's microfic I decided to try some of my own. I don't know about anybody else's reasons.

[horizon]

983366
Ah, ok. Thanks for poking around, and enjoy your stay!

Also:

Discord won't let Fluttershy grow old.

You've seen Bad Horse's version of that story, right?

[LittleSallyDigby]

983385
Oh dear. No, I have not.

Looking back, I think the one about Twilight's mom is my favorite. It's not really any less sad or creepy than the others, but it does have a funny word in it.

[Bradel]

983358 I'm here because you linked this blog in a comment on one of my stories approximately 38 hours ago. I figured that'd be how everyone wound up here. I'm actually a little surprised other people found their way here through different routes but at roughly the same time.

[horizon]

983402
Oh, right! Sorry about being cryptic. The situation is a little … weird.

[Bradel]

983548 It's okay. I'm naturally curious, but... well... it sounds quite private, and if Purple Prose hits close to home because of it...

Well, I'm with 817737, and I'll leave it at that and hope your lack of a conversational pre-reader didn't result in a downvote.