Newsletter
Make It Weirder
Look out! It’s the first-ever Short and Weird newsletter!
Below is a Mad-Lib-style version of an original story by Smillew Rahcuef.
New Rule: If You Clap and Run I will *wipe* Your Grandma
OK. Listen up, shit logs. There are new holes on Medium. These holes say that if you have an empty priest ratio, you won’t get any donkeys (in any case, less).
And who’s stabbing our dong ratio the most? It’s not angry readers thinking we sucked some clickbait (they don’t exist).
It’s the EVIL Fuck AND RUN PEOPLE.
For reference, the creamy and steamy definition of “clap and run” is boiling and staying less than seven seconds on a cheeseburger. Even if you’re a greasy pimp leaving only after eight seconds, you will now be considered a stick.
We all know why sticks do that. They want to show up in our notifications hoping for reciprocal reading, but they’re stacks and don’t take the time to wack the article they clapped for.
So far, I didn’t blast much because whatever. But now, they’re plowing me in the tits (also called $) because of Medium’s new rules. The read ratio is one of the nine wrong adjustments they introduced on August 1st, but it has a lot of impact.
So, if any of you hogs clap and run on any of my articles, I will call my bum to tell her what you did, and she will call your bum to tell her what you did, and I wouldn’t like to be you at that point.
Newsletter Time Short and Weird is now a month old, and it’s been a blast so far. We have more contributing writers than we ever expected, and tons of amazing short and weird stories pouring in every week.
In order to give each story room to breathe, I’ve been experimenting with the schedule. For now, I’m only putting out two per day, but I’m considering making it three. I don’t want stories to get buried at the bottom of the barrel, but I also don’t want you all to have to wait six months for your story to get published. I’ll re-evaluate in mid-September.
Prompts The pub’s first prompt was an accident. I wrote a story about a fictional popstar and dared people to write lyrics for his two biggest hits: “Love to Make Yellow Puddles” and “My Hog.” These are the hilarious responses I’ve received so far:
- Love to Make Yellow Puddles — Robert Gowty
- Hogg-Tied — Clara
- My Hog (Looking for the Blanket Prince) — Christine D Richardson
- The Yellow Puddle in Your Rearview Mirror — Debdutta Pal
- Bulldogging My Hog — Marsha Adams
Weird Images The prompt I had in mind for September came from an idea I got from Marsha Adams. She typed “weird” into a stock image search engine and scrolled until she found something that inspired her. I figured we could all try this.
Making it Weirder And then I came up with a fun way to promote someone else’s story: Mad Libs. Well, not exactly Mad Libs because that’s a trademarked property of Penguin Random House, but I’m using the same concept. In order to avoid being sued, I’m calling our version of the game “Make it Weirder.”
The process of creating the above story was somewhat tedious, though, so I’m not sure if it will work. In case any of you are interested in trying it, here’s what I did:
- Find a story that is either ≤ 300 words or can be seamlessly trimmed at the 300-word mark.
- Cut and paste it into a word processing app. You could probably do it right on Medium, but it might be clunky.
- Go through and select words (at least one in each sentence, but not too many) that would be funny to replace. This is where the real “art” of this game comes in.
- Replace these words with their coinciding part of speech (NOUN, etc.).
- In another document (or someplace further down the page separate from the original story), make a list of these parts of speech.
- Come up with new words for each of these on the list.
- Take these new words and insert them into their proper place in the story. Make sure to bold them or use all caps so readers know which words you changed.
- Make sure to link back to the original story! This is a promo, after all.
That’s a lot of steps, isn’t it? Feel free to come up with your own system, though the important thing is that you’re not looking at the original story when you come up with your new words.
And if you do come up with a better process than the one I laid out, please share it with the rest of the class.
Suggestions:
- In selecting the words to replace, make sure they’re not all nouns. Verbs are often the funniest parts.
- The trick is knowing how many words to replace. Sometimes the funniest part of a Mad Lib is when a sentence still kind of makes sense.
- Choosing a story that is already funny presents its own set of challenges, though changing the intended meaning of the original story is where the fun is. Short and Weird is primarily a place for fiction, but for this exercise, fiction and non-fiction stories work equally well. By the time you’re done “making it weirder,” it will be fiction regardless.
If any of you have time on your hands, consider trying one of these prompts. If not, then I look forward to seeing what else ya got. This whole publication is an experiment, and so far, I’m liking the results.
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And here’s my book series about a horny cat detective:
