Post #118 – Women’s Memoirs, Writing Prompt – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
Using Words in Memoir Writing
If you’re like I am, you fuss a lot with words when you write. In addition to choosing precise words, you may try to not repeat the same word over and over. You probably have a thesaurus nearby or can quickly get to an online version. That always helps us find a similar word to avoid the repetition problem.
Today, however, I’d like to pick up the other end of the stick and turn this into a writing prompt. But first a little background.
As you know from previous Memoir Writing Prompts, I’m a fan of Southwest Airlines’ Spirit magazine. This summer, I read in their July issue that Dr. Seuss used only 50 different words in his bestselling book Green Eggs and Ham. (Right there he has already used up four words.)
Why so few? Dr. Seuss (whose real name was Theodor Seuss Geisel) wrote The Cat in the Hat using only 236 words from a list of 348 words that William Ellsworth Spaulding, Houghton Mifflin’s director of education, determined were important for first-graders. He challenged Geisel, a masterful storyteller, to write a book that would use no more than 250 of these words.
Not just any book. A book that young children would want to devour and therefore would turn them into avid readers. Although it took Geisel about nine months — proving that fewer words isn’t easier, he did write The Cat in the Hat within the given parameter.
Then Bennett Cerf, Geisel’s editor, bet him $50 that he couldn’t write a children’s book using just 50 words. Rising to the challenge, Geisel wrote Green Eggs and Ham using the following words:
a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, you
Cerf made a big show of losing the bet, however, it’s believed that he never paid.
But the world had the reward of a clever and popular children’s book.
Writing Prompt
I’m not a Dr. Seuss and you probably aren’t either. However, we can give ourselves a similar challenge. Here are a couple of variations:
1. Write an imaginary letter to a young person in your family — child, grandchild, niece, nephew. It doesn’t really matter but it is better if this can be a real person and that will influence what you write. Then decide on the number of different words you will use. I suggest that 50 is too few. Perhaps you might decide on 100 to 300. Then write a story about your childhood using the limited vocabulary.
2. Create a list of 50 words. You aren’t limited to a simple vocabulary for a child. Then write a story and include all of the words.
Both of these writing exercises will challenge you and force you to think about the relationship between specific words and your story.
