One True Sentence

“Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” - ERNEST HEMINGWAY - One True Sentence.

The idea behind this quote from Ernest Hemingway, is when he would have trouble writing, he would he remind himself through this quote. He explained this in his memoirs "A moveable feast" which is based around his years as a struggling, young, expatriate journalist and writer in the 1920's in Paris. Hemingway would say the writer's job is to tell the truth, so he would write one true sentence and then go on from there.

The shortest story-

"Imagine all human beings swept off the face of the earth, excepting one man. Imagine this man in some vast city, Tripoli or Paris. Imagine him on the third or fourth day" - Thomas Bailey Aldrich, 1904

"Knock" is a science fiction short story which was based on the following text above by Thomas Bailey Aldrich which is considered a short short story. 

"The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door." - Fredric Brown, 1948

What Brown did was condensed this text to a little action story that is only two sentences long, this then goes on to elaborate on those two sentences to build a more complete plot.

Seminar

The picture we were shown

In this seminar, we were given a task based around the "One true sentence" topic. We were shown a picture and had to do the following steps below one by one-

1)Write one (short) true sentence. As fewer words as possible.
2)Add a description of the content
3)Add a description of more content
4)Give the content an emotional quality
5)What is going to happen next?
6)What happened before?

 (This is my attempt at the task)

A couple of things I noticed in the picture that help me write up some ideas was the fact the bear had their tongue stuck out, so I assumed it was trying to keep cool. Hence why I said the bear was exhausted after a hot day therefore waiting for it to rain so the bear can cool down. I also included a couple of rhymes in the story to keep it flowing, for example 'Bear>Chair' and 'Rain>Terrain' The idea of this task was to explore how easy it can be to create a story and how you can continue writing about several different things just from one sentence. 

In the previous seminar session, we were asked to bring several objects based around one of essay questions we looked at. Below is a mindmap I created to show several ideas I could write about. It also helped me to gather specific resources and what to start researching. I bought a few printed documents about the history of the pop art movement and Bauhaus. I also brought a book which is about video game design and writing. This book has a variety of references to where some video games got their inspiration from and guide you.

Following the bear task, we were asked to do a similar task but based on one of the objects we brought in. I decided to follow this task on my pop art research document, below is my attempt. 

The term 'Abstract expressionism' which developed in New York in the 1940s, is a post-world war II art movement in American painting. The purpose of this was to achieve international influence in order to put New York City at the centre of the western art world which was a role formerly filled by paris. One of the most celebrated and famous abstract artists, is Kandinsky who experimented with colour shapes and symbols. These artists demonstrates new ways to make art on huge canvases and give us new ways to experience it.

 Composition IV, 1911 Kandinsky

For homework, I was to write another sentence for a different object. I used my beside lamp for this task. 

1) A lamp located on a desk.

2) A illuminating lamp located on a desk.

3) A illuminating lamp located on a modern desk.

4) A spirited, illuminating lamp located on a modern desk. 

5) A spirited, illuminating lamp located on a modern desk, loses its power.

6) A spirited, illuminating lamp located on a modern desk, loses its power

after it irradiated the corner of the room.