The Art of the Anecdote

Kurt Vonnegut's eight rules of short story writing.

1)Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2)Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3)Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4)Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.

5)Start as close to the end as possible.

6)Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7)Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8)Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.


Sean Salisbury's eight rules of short story writing:

1) It must be short.

2) It must be a story.

3) It must be readable. And by that I mean able to be read.

4) It must. be. really. short.

5) It must be interesting.

6) The Reader should come away thinking he read something.

7) Because he did, right?

8) It has to be short.


George W. Bush's eight rules for short story writing:

1) We must stay the course.

2) I declare war on terror.

3) Nucular.

4) Write it dead or alive.

5) Bring those blank pages ON!

6) We must stay the course.

7) We are winning the war against short stories.

8) Short stories? Are those terrorists?

No, this blog has not gone haywire, there is a point to all of this. (Those of you familiar with Sean Salisbury probably already divined that I will get this around to sports somehow). I just gave three examples of the same thing: people attempting to categorically provide relatively general rules for a broad topic. A lot of these become known as cliches (though not all do), and these anecdotes and adages pervade our society like McDonald's and morons. I am about to detail a list of sports cliches, and rate them according to one of three designations. The astute among you might have noticed by now that I provided you with three examples already, as guidelines for my designations. The three possible categories a cliche or overused sports adage can fall into are: "Useful, unuseful, and completely inane".

To illustrate my point, Kurt Vonnegut's rules for short stories are useful. Some of them are a tad obvious but none to the point that simply remaining silent would have been more appropriate than enlightening the world. Sean Salisbury's cliches are completely obsolete. Even mentioning them is a waste of breath because if someone doesn't comprehend that point already, they have no business bothering with their current goal and should instead take up kayaking. George W. Bush's rules are either completely lacking in pertinence, simply wrong, or so insanely ludicrous that they have no function. So our three ratings for cliches will be:

V

S

B

I'm sure you guys can wrap your head around those. So now, without further Tom Delay, my list of sports cliches.

Let's start it off with some you already have experienced my wrath regarding:

"Defense wins championships.": S. This cliche is true--good teams have good defense and good teams win championships therefore good defenses win championships. But it is utterly useless to state it all of the time--or any of the time. Also, if the speaker implies that defense wins championships but offense doesn't, I direct you to the 2007 Super Bowl.

"If you can run the ball, and stop the run, you will win in the NATIONAL. FOOTBALL. LEAGUE.": B. This simply is not true. The Vikings circa 2007 could do both of these things and yet could not win. They didn't even make the playoffs. Plenty of teams follow that trend, also; it isn't just a once in a lifetime thing. The reason this ridiculous statement has so much credence is due to the fact that theoretically, if you can run the ball well, the opposing defense will need to adjust in order to stop it, therefore opening up the pass. But the reverse is also true. You think the Colts would be able to run it worth a Larry Hughes jumpshot if they didn't have Peyton Manning throwing the ball all the time? Uh... no?

"Experience wins championships.": B. In the words of Billy Donovan: "I don't know how valuable experience is, because we won last year and didn't have any of it." Exactly. Why does this cliche pervade society? Because players who happen to be "inexperienced" are usually simply "not as good." For instance, in the NBA, Lebron only got to the finals in his fourth year. Does this have much to do with "experience", or is just a matter of him being better than he was four years ago? And if by "experience" you simply mean "more time to learn how to play better", than this cliche becomes an S, because DUH, better players win championships.

"If you believe in yourself, good things happen.": V. Yes, surprisingly, this one has some merit. A lot of people think the confidence thing is overblown, and let me tell you, in most walks of life that is absolutely true. But in sports, where you don't so much think as you react, the ability to mentally *allow* yourself to react is hugely integral to succeeding. If you are thinking, you are probably moving slowly and hurting your chances at success. If you believe so intently that you are good enough to do something without thinking, the odds dramatically rise.

"Good receivers catch the ball with their hands.": S. Is it a bit alarming that NFL commentators *actually* use this phrase? (Or was it just Theisman? It might be only him. If so, that's good.)

"Good pitchers pitch inside.": S. Good pitchers also pitch outside, up, down and everywhere else. The real line should be "Bad pitchers don't pitch inside." although that is pretty obvious as well.

"Great teams start with great big men.": V/S/B. This one is all three because it is true, false and useless and useful all at the same time. I lean toward a "B" overall, though, because cliches are failures if they don't almost always work. And this one does not always work. Then again, it works often enough that it is not completely and totally and entirely useless. But really, Luc Longley? Yeah, the Bulls built their team with a great big man. On the other hand, MJ was the greatest player ever, and big men have dominated the league for the past ten years (Shaq and Duncan have won eight of nine). Once again, though, as great as Shaq was, he had Kobe and Dwayne (granted, Shaq was a larger part of the reason they were good, but without them he still couldn't have pulled it off), and the Pistons managed to win without a dominant big man (Ben Wallace simply doesn't count).

"To win, their *insert best player here* has to have a huge game.": S. Yeah. Theisman loves it but so do other commentators.

"To win, they need to control the clock and win the turnover battle.": S. Another Theisman favorite, but it is proclaimed before every NFL game, by whoever is calling the action. Period.

Heck, let's make this rule:

"*Insert Joe Theisman or Tim McCarver quote here*": B/S. Hey look at those initials! I didn't even plan it that way!

"With their *insert player here* injured, other players need to step up.": S. I mean, come on. Who doesn't understand that when you lose a player, another player needs to attempt to take his place?

"They need to do a better job of taking care of the football/basketball.": S. Usually following a turnover or two, this phrase is tantamount to proclaiming "they need to score more" after three consecutive failures to do so.

Well there are more cliches that need destruction but those will have to wait for another time. At least now you understand the basic premise of how I dismantle and organize these preferred repetative sayings of America's fast-food populace.

Until next time,

~The Sports Maunderer~