Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different

by Chuck Palahniuk

Write as if you were the collective voice of a film review board that’s been asked to assign an audience rating to a yet-to-be-released movie. Speaking in the collective “we” you cite increasingly absurd inferences the board members believe they are seeing. Clouds that look too phallic for comfort. The maybe-not-accidental way that shadows cast by people and animals combine and interact. Doughnuts being eaten by children in a possibly suggestive manner. In your report to the filmmaker, you cite how individual viewers first recognized each transgression, but when it was pointed out all reviewers seized upon each as a blatant offense. The story should be a snowballing litany of “projection” as the self-righteous viewers protest about subliminal horrors that demonstrate more about the reviewers’ sick imaginations than anything actually depicted in the film. Good luck. Keep it short. Go nuts.