The Prompt-O-Matic: #5
A little something to get you writing.
Readers,
During my eight years as the editorial director of a wonderful non-profit called TMI Project, I often had to come up with writing prompts for workshops I led. I had a knack for consistently coming up with a varied assortment that jogged people’s brains, eliciting productive writing, and leading the executive director to nickname me “The Prompt-O-Matic.” I thought I’d repurpose that knack over here, in The Lit Lab, offering occasional prompts for paid subscribers. This is the fifth installment.
Today, though, instead of a prompt, I share with you a writing exercise. And since it’s not my own exercise, but rather one created by master memoirist Abigail Thomas, I’m not putting it behind a paywall like I normally do with the prompts and exercise I devise myself.
Here’s the gist: In this exercise, you’ll write a two-page story made up of only three-word sentences. It’s a great way to cut to the heart of your story, while also having fun.
Here’s the way Thomas describes the exercise in her 2008 craft book, Thinking About Memoir.
Take any ten years of your life, reduce them to two pages, and every sentence has to be three words long—not two, not four, but three words long. You discover there's nowhere to hide in three-word sentences. You discover that you can't include everything, but half of writing is deciding what to leave out. Learning what to leave out is not the same thing as putting in only what's important. Sometimes it's what you're not saying that gives a piece its shape.
For our purposes, feel free to write two pages of three-word sentences about anything you’d like; it doesn’t have to cover ten years of your life. When you’re done, feel free to share up to one paragraph of the results in the comments.
I was introduced to this exercise back in 2015, when I participated in a fundraiser for the Ulster Literacy Association called “Make it Snappy,” hosted by Martha Frankel’s Woodstock Bookfest. We were each invited to tell any story of up to two pages, exclusively in three-word sentences. Here’s mine:
I hope you have as much fun with the three-word-sentence exercise as I did.
-Sari
On the sofa. Reading a book. He sits nearby. Reading his computer. We aren't talking. For now, anyway. Just not talking. Just reading together. Well, reading separately. And being quiet. It's all there. Love, comfort, relief. Why say it? But I do. I say, hey. He looks up. He says, hey. He says, what? I say, nothing. He says, okay. I say, okay. We both shrug. Nothing to say. Nothing needs saying. Good to know. I read again. So does he.
So amazing, Sari. What a performance! So damn entertaining. Clever and satisfying. (That was my Comment in three word sentences.)