One Great Moment

Quick insights inspired by small moments across story formats.

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“He watched a mouse saunter up the electric cord leading to the nonfunctioning clock over the hotel bar and asked the Chinese waitress in German whether it was a tiger.”

By One Great Moment March 1, 2017

This vivid, funny, terrific sentence could have been drawn from Lewis Carroll, but it’s from the middle of a deadline story on the frustrations of two “peace commissions” that were unable to keep the peace in Vietnam.  The observer is a Polish Army … Read more

“The fences insured against a time when a scavenger in Gautam Nagar might learn that a shot of rare Scotch consumed in ten minutes at the Sheraton’s ITC Maratha cost exactly as much as he earned in seven hundred fourteen-hour days picking up aluminum cans and used tampon applicators, and find that information too much to bear.”

By One Great Moment February 15, 2017

Why it’s great: The sentence is a story in itself. It creates a texture landscape in the reader’s mind (taste that rare scotch, sharp and warm in your throat; then feel the ache in your lower spine, and your own … Read more