This will be the shortest writing assignment of the year: the Six-Word Memoir Project. Legend has it that upon being challenged to write the shortest novel ever, Ernest Hemingway famously wrote the following as his response: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."
Here are our Day #1 Activities:
Here are our Day #1 Activities:
- As Journal Entry #1, flesh out and extend Hemingway's six words to exactly 200 words.
- Read and discuss the article from The New Yorker magazine "Say It All in Six Words." Write a 100-word description of this book review in terms of how the author, Lizzie Widdecombe, crafted her writing to achieve her purpose.
- Look through the tips from sponsor Smith Magazine here.
- Six tips for writing your memoir: For tomorrow, write a six-word memoir of your summer.
6 Tips for Writing Six-Word Memoirs- Make your six-word memoir personal and honest.
- Use the Six Word limitation to inspire creativity.
- Think about the emotion/tone you wish to express through your writing.
- Put the six best words in the best order to express exactly what you want to communicate.
- Consider where you will place capital letters and punctuation marks.
- Get inspired from reading other six-word memoirs.
- Make your six-word memoir personal and honest.
- What exactly is a memoir? A memoir is a literary nonfiction genre much like an autobiography. However, unlike an autobiography, which tells a complete life story, a memoir tells a story from a life, such as one event or memory that helped shape them as a person.
- Click here to read the "Most Favorited" examples.
- Click here to read the "Editor's Picks" examples.
- Here are a few questions about the examples:
- After reading the six-word memoirs, what surprises you about this form of writing?
- What can you learn from it to take into other types of writing?
- What were some of the common themes that emerged from the writing? Which themes stood out to you the most and why?
- What emotions are revealed through these six-word memoirs? Which words make you feel those emotions?
- Why is storytelling important? Can your story change?
- How difficult do you think it is to capture the essence of who you are into six words?
- What difference do you see in the visual representations of the six-word memoirs you read? Why do you think some authors chose to include pictures?
- As a class, consider how punctuation affects the six-word memoir by choosing three and rewriting them changing only the punctuation. Discuss how this changes the meaning of the memoir.