Ernest Hemingway, when asked to provide a story using only six words, famously wrote:
For sale:
Baby shoes.
Never used.
Now, I've never been much of a Hemingway fan (even though I'm writing a play about his early life in western Michigan), but I'd say this is pretty good.
Smith magazine recently asked their readers to email them their life stories in six words, and have published a collection of the best of them, for example:
After Harvard, had baby with crackhead.
- Robin Templeton
70 years, few tears, hairy ears.
- Bill Querengesser
Watching quietly from every door frame.
- Nicole Resseguie
Catholic school backfired. Sin is in!
- Nikki Beland
Some cross-eyed kid, forgotten then found.
- Diana Welch
She said she was negative. Damn.
- Ryan McRae
If you had to write a story -- whether it's your life story or not -- in six words, what would it be?