Tag Archives: Danny Williamson

The 4-Sentence Project

There’s something really interesting going on at The 4-Sentence Story Project.

Guelph,  Ontario’s Danny Williamson (on twitter as @dcwllms) is capturing an idea that many writers should attempt from time to time. Write as clear and concise as you can to complete a full story, but write it all in only 4 sentences.

How brilliant is that?

Danny writes a story every single day, an ambitious project for sure. Occasionally I’ll be lucky enough to see him post a link on twitter pointing to his posts and I find myself wandering through days upon days of stories. Some seem like little snippets of a bigger idea, some seem complete in their wonderfulness.

My Favourite post from the 4-Sentence Story Project.
My Favourite post from the 4-Sentence Story Project.

The tagline for his blog mentions a story Hemingway supposedly wrote in 6 sentences: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Some people are brilliant and some people see opportunities in the ideas of other people. Danny Williamson is one who saw an opportunity and took it to the next level.

By challenging himself to write daily, he is forcing himself to be accountable to his goal. Regular readers will check back and badger him if he hasn’t posted. And no one likes to be badgered.

The written word is so interesting. It allows us to convey messages, stories, facts. It allows us to open our hearts and minds and share our ideas with others or keep them for ourselves. I’ve always been the type of person that thinks better when writing. That could be typing or by writing in a notebook or journal. I have a tendency to include those nasty “ly” adjectives where a strong verb might be better and sometimes I go off on tangents (as I clearly am doing right now.) Reading his stories remind me to tighten things up and get to the point.

I think this is a wonderful initiative and I applaud Danny Williamson not only for the quality of his work, but for keeping it up for nearly 800 days. If you haven’t checked out the project yet, I strongly suggest you do.  http://foursentencestories.blogspot.ca/