The Canadian Writers' Collective

Writing, and writerly tangents

Friday, October 06, 2006

How to Write a Short Story

By Anne Chudobiak

“Inspiration can strike at any time, so carry a notepad [or bank receipts] with you wherever you go so that you can write down story ideas as they come to you [but remember that if your snippet does not reveal its story within seven years, you must surrender it to no fewer than eleven other writers or suffer a curse on your house and keyboard.]” wikiHow

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JUN 20-00 18:24 Mach. No. ZE06
WD CHEQ $60.00
BALANCE IS: $557.59

[Please excuse the handwriting. Penmanship has never been my strong point.]

“One group, working with Tide, saw it as Sylvester Stallone. ‘The positive side of this was that the product gets your clothes clean. It gets the job done,’ says Gross. ‘The negative is that the product seems a little bit crass.’

Another group saw a familiar brand of detergent as a s!ut who stayed out all night at 14, was pregnant at 17, and attended a Hallowe’en party wearing a loincloth and no top. Gross’s interpretation: The product is ‘easy,’ promising too many features to too many people, most of them lazy people.”

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I’d credit this if I could. I think I read it at the laundromat. I want to say Reader’s Digest, but do they do PG13?*

*Note to our friends in the UK. Where you live, PG13 is called 12. They grow up so fast. I for one blame the loincloth manufacturers and their shameless ad campaigns. When’s someone going to write about that?

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks Anne. The WikiHow page made me laugh. It starts off with anyone can write a short story then concludes by saying short stories are the hardest kind to write. I like the bank statement snippet. I've participated in those marketing focus groups. Tide as Sylvester Stallone? I'll stop using it immediately.

Tricia (for some reason blogger has stopped recognizing me)

Fri Oct 06, 01:31:00 pm GMT-4  
Blogger J.A. McDougall said...

Nice work Anne. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend!

Fri Oct 06, 06:23:00 pm GMT-4  
Blogger Unknown said...

this is sooo funny, wikihow, I love the one, "let the story write itself." I thought, wowwowowowow!! where do I pay for that service?

thanks Anne.

Sat Oct 07, 06:37:00 pm GMT-4  

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