Each week we browse LiveJournal’s Popular Entries feature to unearth fascinating, obsessive, and sometimes bizarre communities for your perusal. There’s bound to be one just for you.
Have you ever looked at Twitter’s 140 character limit and thought, “No, that’s too much?”
If so, SixWordStories is for you. In this brain teaser of a LiveJournal community, users outwit themselves daily by composing stories no longer or shorter than six words.
According to community owner swsmod, the journal takes its core concept from the shortest story Ernest Hemingway supposedly ever wrote: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” In 2006, Wired magazine seized on the idea and invited celebrities to share their own micro-stories.
Swsmod was so taken with the exercise, he said he created the journal the same month that the Wired article ran. As it turned out, he wasn’t the only one who liked the idea—with 35,000 members, SixWordStories is the 8th most populous community on the LiveJournal today.
Users add context to their short stories by assigning them particular tags like “personal journal,” to imply that it’s a story based on life experiences, or “roleplay journal,” to indicate that the person is telling the story in character while role-playing as a person within his or her fandom.
Here are six recent, cryptic six word stories:
1) “This town ever short on crazies?” —asymbol
2) “Found the perfect house … it’s haunted.” —werewolf_hacker
3) “I’m going to need new clothes.” —capfangirl
4) “Anybody need a roommate, for … awhile? —leohorizon
5) “My fat neighbor is stalking me.” —negritoflores
6) “I’m sorry. What were you saying?” —redrepels
Photo by ticklish_moose
