Word Salad

Summary

Carolyn Hastings reflects on Amanda Laughtland's One-Sentence Story Challenge, discussing the art of writing concise yet impactful prose.

Abstract

Carolyn Hastings participates in Amanda Laughtland's One-Sentence Story Challenge, which involves crafting a coherent narrative within the confines of a single sentence. Hastings contrasts this with Sheri Jacobs' 10-Word Story Challenge, emphasizing the difficulty of conveying meaning in such brevity. She describes the challenge as creating a 'word salad' and shares her own piece, which is a prose poem that criticizes a character's nonsensical ranting. Hastings appreciates the exercise for its ability to reveal the essence of a story and thanks Laughtland for the creative prompt. She also extends the challenge to several writer friends, inviting them to contribute their own single-sentence stories.

Opinions

Hastings views the One-Sentence Story Challenge as both fun and a test of writing skill.
She believes that the challenge of writing a single, coherent sentence can lead to profound results.
Hastings implies that the character in her story is self-centered and illogical, yet her rant is part of a larger narrative strategy.
She appreciates the creative constraints imposed by the challenge and the opportunity to connect with other writers.
Hastings acknowledges the potential for a single sentence to carry the weight of an entire story.
She expresses gratitude to Amanda Laughtland for initiating the challenge and to Denise Larkin for publishing her work.

Tossed around in a prose poem

She went on and on forever complaining ad nauseam about everything under, over, and all around the sun, as if she were the only one in the universe with a tongue attached to tensile talking apparatus and a gripe about how abysmally she’d been wronged, and yet, if you took the time to listen — to really concentrate on her words — it would be clear as the star-studded heavens on a frost-inflected night in the Atacama desert, that her logic was completely and utterly screwed, and while she made not one iota of sense — as in, it was a word salad of exponential, ever-expanding proportions — there was no point stopping her in her mission, just as nothing could — or would — be gained by catapulting yourself into the helter-skelter detritus of Saturn’s orbital rings, unless of course your motivation was to be the ultimate Kamikaze, in which case, please go right ahead in the full fiduciary knowledge I have warned you — as best I can — to expect a grisly demise, and when the deed is eventually done she will have had her way and won, because her ploy was always to suck the living lifeblood out of you.

A week of constrained writing — if you can call going from a 10-word sentence to a 200-word sentence, constrained! Two hundred! That’s how many words I tossed into my ‘word salad’. I hope my attempt makes more sense to you than the nonsensical rant the narcissistic provocateur in my story dished up to her poor, unfortunate victim. 😜

Thank you, Amanda for tagging me in your One-Sentence Challenge — it was fun! I thought about setting out the phrases in short, bite-size lines, however, it seemed to work better as a prose poem. I hope I made the right choice. 🙏

I’d like to call on a few of my writerly friends to join Amanda’s challenge if they feel so inclined —

✨ Gun Roswell, Thomas Plummer and Thief because they’re masters at writing super-long sentences in one form or fashion.

✨ E. Ardincaple and Lee David Tyrrell because I think they could spin an interesting tale in one sentence.

✨ Liza Carver and Sandi Parsons because I’ve only just recently connected with them so why not invite them to join a prompt?

✨ Mirrelle Beneffitte, Sally A Mortemore and Amae because their attention to detail always throws up something profound.

✨ And last, but certainly by no means least, Denise Larkin, because without her and her wonderful publication, The Lark, you wouldn’t be reading this piece — thank you, Denise. 🙏 💕

Please find the details for the prompt here —

Thank you all for reading. 🙏 💕

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Amanda Laughtland’s One-Sentence Story Challenge

Word Salad

Tossed around in a prose poem

Single Sentence Poem (or Short Prose) Challenge

Inspired by Emily Dickinson and other writers