NOLA Six Words Writing Challenge

What’s NOLA Six Words all about?

NOLA Six Words is a Yat thing

When Twitter first entered the world, the punditocracy dubbed the platform, “Microblogging.” Many of us wrote on platforms like Blogger or LiveJournal. Those sites offered folks places to write anything from a sentence or two to full chapters of novels. Twitter changed social discourse on the Internet. While discussion and debate online had been around for decades on USENET, BITNET, Electronic Bulletin Boards, etc., Twitter leveraged tiny-format, SMS-style messaging.

Twitter created opportunities for writers to stretch their creativity. Instead of writing a one paragraph to one page story, writers bypassed “micro-fiction,” heading down to “nano-fiction.” Someone posted an idea, topic, suggestion, encouraging others to write a sentence about it. But a sentence wasn’t limiting enough for Twitter geeks. These exercises focused on a word limit, “In five words or less…” sort of thing.

I noticed these exercises years ago, but wasn’t moved to join in. That changed when I began to regularly follow Harry Turtledove, author of numerous alternative history and science fiction novels and stories. Mr. Harry enjoys these challenges. He’s got the quick wit to come up with something within minutes of the topic flowing through the timelines. Even though I enjoyed reading his creations, I didn’t get into the trend.

But I kept reading them. The challenges offered insight into the thought processes of both creator and writer. That’s when I found my niche in this genre, how about getting people to write six-word stories about New Orleans? After all, there’s a lot of truth to the Tennessee Williams quote, “America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.”

Play Along!

We’re not Cleveland. Things hit differently here. It’s absolutely possible to express the impact of New Orleans in six words. We present the six word challenge on various Zuckergroups as well as bluesky. Now you have the opportunity to check the challenge out in From the Streetcar. Share your answer on social media, or email us at nolasixwords@nolahistoryguy.com.