NOMTI NEW OPERA AND MUSICAL THEATER INITIATIVE
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Six-Word Stories

The most famous six-word story is "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." It is often attributed to Ernest Hemingway, though the true history is apparently more complicated (see the entry in Wikipedia).

Wherever the original model came from, participants in NOMTI have found that creating boiled-down stories is a very useful skill for musical theater writers. Unfortnately, if you can't express the spine of your story in a single sentence, it is all too likely that that your story doesn't yet make sense. So six-word stories are an efficient way to practice finding the essential structure of a story.
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  • Writers Lab
  • Resources
    • On Collaboration
    • On Feedback
    • On Developing New Work
    • On Quality
    • Story-writing notes
  • About
    • Board of Directors
    • AWL Past Participants
  • Contact