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- When I was in high school and college,
I used to write stories in bullet form.
- The story goes like this:
I used to write brilliant prose and not-so-brilliant lists.
- People would only read my dim lists and skim my bright prose.
- So I tried to think of a way to trick people into reading prose without realizing that
that was what they were doing.
- Suddenly, it occurred to me that there was a feature I never seemed to use in Word: bullets.
- There’s very nearly no place for bulleted lists in humorous or even fictional writing.
- Think about it.
- So why couldn’t I co-opt it to serve my own nefarious purposes?
- And co-opt it I did. I would write silly stories with no aim in mind,
but once I put them into the format of “Bullets”
- people would be drawn to them, thinking they were a quick read.
- and the people would stay because they were at least an interesting read.
- The bullets were brilliant!
- They even made me seem less dim.
Ironically, he didn't see it coming.