Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Short Stories...

Beginning. Middle. End.
Easy enough, right?
Ok. How about in five minutes or less.

Sounds easy enough, no? 30 second commercials. One-page magazine advertisements. News headlines. Common cliche. It's not as easy as it seems.

Consider: Nabokov's short stories still take at least 40 minutes just to read. Newspaper clippings that take five minutes are only snapshots of life, not stories. In a conversation it usually takes someone more than five minutes to recount a story.

Tonight's mission has been: what story can you tell in 300 seconds...
Mission: Impossible?

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