Introducing the Six Word Wonder Generator

I spend a fair amount of time writing six words stories. As you can imagine, this can be a hell of a lot of effort. It got me thinking, is there a way to write a six word story using a computer?

After much research and heartache, I found a way to build my own six word wonder generator. At last, no more creativity for me. Or, so I thought…

What is the Six Word Wonder generator?

Put simply, the six word wonder generator will produce an endless stream of six word stories with exciting characters doing strange things.

Yes, but does the Six Word Wonder generator work?

If by “work” you mean does it to technically produce sentences that are six words long, the answer is a resounding yes. However, if you’re asking whether every story produced by the generator is a high class, quality piece of fiction, then the answer is a resounding no. It’s a beta, which means it’s likely to spit out errors. And there’s no artificial intelligence, it’s all rules-driven, and and writers quickly learn that a rules-driven system is made to be broken.

But, through serendipity and magic from the bowels of the cloud, strange news stories do form. Here are just a few recent ones that tickled my fancy.

Example story is generated by the six word wonder generator:

“Cute Russian favourably paid the Lemon.”

“Jolly Mexican lovingly painted the turtle.”

“Sizzling teenager healthily killed the lion.”

“Cowardly elephant ethically re-cycled the gangster.”

“Irascible panda thereby buried the painter.”

“Sloppy goldfish darkly kissed the genius.”

All sourced from the Six Word Wonder Generator

It seems reassuring that even a computer driven six word story seems obsessed with killing, murder, and violence, just like most human beings.

It’s on my own limited research so far, I would say that the six word wonder generator produces gibberish about 80% of the time. Of the remaining 20%, there are occasional nuggets of intrigue, surrealism, comedy, and drama. My plan is to pound for these nuggets and I will share any great ones I find. Please do share with me any stories you enjoy.

How did you build the Six Word Wonder generator?

My skills at HTML and JavaScript are limited, to say the least. I found an open source JavaScript that created rudimentary sentences. I adapted this script to allow me to create only six word stories, following a subject action object format. I then built a vast database of verbs, adjectives, nouns and so on to populate the creator. In future, I plan to further build on this with different language shapes.

Building the generator gave me some new insights into what is six word story is from a technical grammatical base: how are the building blocks of language plug together that I largely use instinctively.

One interesting thing I discovered whilst building out the tool is that a seven word story is easier for the generator to create. However, I’m determined to stay pure to the six Word format. Imagine, next one interesting thing I discovered is that a seven word story is easier for the generator to create. However, I’m determined to stay pure to the six Word format. Imagine, next will be writing haikus with footnotes we will be writing haiku’s with footnotes.

If you love six word stories, memoirs, jokes and poems, I can think of no better place to start them by reading the Six Word Wonder book.