how to write a short story

content/trigger warning: references to abuse, depression, sex toys, bodily fluids (urine, semen), drugs (psychiatric medication, amphetamines)

There's a lot I want to say but of course there's only so much that I can. So much that I should. They say that should's a bad word but sometimes it's protection. A defense. Art is war most of the time, probably always, but only because life is. War isn't the best word here. There's another word I should use but the time isn't right yet. Sometimes I think this is knowledge hoarding but it's not like I made up the word. It's not a word nobody knows. The word's out there, the concept's out there, all you'd have to do is apply it to this: art, writing, storytelling. The definition of art is recontextualization, you know? I don't know that that's step one but it's definitely one of the steps. Maybe the only step. That seems reductive, but the definition of art is also reduction, you know? Recontextualization is reduction, but also expansion, so let's say the definition of art is contradiction too. Ooh, now we're getting somewhere. Or you could say, "now we're cooking," and so the definition of art is also — well, I've probably said too much already.

Another idiom: "There's nothing new under the sun." I don't know if that makes you feel bad but I know for me it's relief. It's just us. There's nothing but us. So of course there's nothing new. We're all there is, and we don't change too quickly, or at least not quickly enough to make new possible all that often. We also change extremely quickly (contradiction), so there's always something new (recontextualization), it just won't be recognized as new until it's old (reduction). You know?

Okay, by way of example: my best friend tells me I'm a good writer and that I gotta do something about that and a hundred years ago Arturo told me it's okay not to be a writer and I took his word for it and he wasn't wrong but he wasn't right either. It's okay not to be a writer but it's not okay not to dream. Imagine. Create. And if you stifle that impulse long enough all you get is nightmares instead. A year into the pandemic, I wanted to apply to a bunch of startup incubators and get a fuck ton of seed money to build, I don't know, Theranos for dogs. Lyft for trikes. One Medical for bees. Amazon for dildos. AirBnb for blue jeans. I don't know. Honestly, I was actually pretty good at it, but only because anyone would be. You're broke and you fall for a pyramid scheme and you'd come up with just about everything I did. VR for aliens. AI for sluts. Netflix for amphetamines. Juicero for cum. Or maybe piss. Whatever.

Anyways, my best friend is right so I start writing. Once upon a time, I was so depressed and so heavily loaded up with psychiatric medication, I couldn't write without using AI: I'd feed a line to GPT-2 (an oldie but a goodie) and it'd feed me something back and then I'd go from there. Most of what I wrote with it was okay. It was fine.

So I thought about doing that again but then I looked out the window.

I didn't see a park but there was a park down the street. Then I went to the bathroom and there was a book called The Hologram across from the toilet, between the toilet paper and the Q-tips. So I started writing a short story called "The Hologram" about someone who looks out a window and sees a park with a hologram at its center.

That's it.

That's all.

Take everything you see seriously. Mash together whatever's around you. Then work until you're done.

You can do it because it's what you already do every day except for someone else. Now do it for the reader. I was going to do it for a startup incubator. Now I do it for the reader.

Okay, but there's something missing, and I don't want to talk too much about the why, only the how. Just know that I hate bylines. (Bylines are fame is power is abuse; reduction, whatever, you understand.)

I came up with a system: a byline made up of two names, the names of people who already exist (real or fictional, it doesn't matter), and written with no spaces and all lowercase. Kind of like usernames. One of my short stories, "The Hologram," is by georgewallace and londonbreed and it doesn't really matter whether you know who they are, you understand. Triangulation works because three data points determine a fourth; two intersecting lines don't really have a "center" unless you connect them by a third. The two names are the two lines; the title of the story is the third. Their center is the story.

More simply: if George Wallace and London Breed wrote a short story called "The Hologram," what would it say?

That's it; that's all.

Some examples:

"RIOT!" by jonathanlarson and pussyriot

"The Everything Girl" by ziwe and elizabethholmes

"The People vs. John F. Kennedy-North" by dorothyparker and northwest

"Cronenburg" by davidcronenberg and brandoncronenberg

"Ru Girl" by asiaohara and thevixen

"Please Don't Read This If You're White" by shaunking and racheldolezal

"Sim City" by willwright and janejacobs

"The Prompt" by chatgpt and dalle

"250 BPM" by janefonda and daftpunk

"6°" by kevinbacon and rolandemmerich

"Major War" by jillbiden and vladimirputin

"Station Twelve" by mirandacarroll and dondawest

"Station Thirteen" by frankchaudhary and idabwells

"Station Fourteen" by paulimurray and antoninartaud

I have another 30 or so of these somewhere, most I never wrote. Some I did. Some I wrote half, or more. "Platformer" [LINK] was originally by félixguattari and gillesdeleuze. "The Girls from Pasadena" was originally by — well, that one's self-explanatory.

Feel free, by the way, to write any of the stories above; they're prompts of sorts, I suppose. But, of course, you'll have better luck if you come up with them yourself.

There's a lot I want to say — to get you where you need to go (the end of a short story) — but still I fear I shouldn't. So if the definition of art is also transgression, then I should do something that I shouldn't (contradiction), so I'll tell you, finally, to think of this art as the art of mathematics. To write a story like you'd craft a proof. To tell a tale like you'd fashion an equation.

There's always an answer at the end. A solution. Resolve.

That's it. That's all. You understand. You understanding.