From The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery The next planet was inhabited by a tippler. This was a very short visit, but it plunged the little prince into deep dejection. “What are you doing there?” he said to the tippler, whom he found settled down in silence before a collection of empty bottles and Read more about Favorite Dialogues – 1[…]
From Sleeping Fires, by George Gissing
In this passage, middle-aged Langley seeks permission from eighteen-year-old Louis’s guardian, Lady Revill, to take the boy under his wing and help guide him through the shoals of youthful adventuring. Lady Revill is a former lover of Langley with whom he has only recently reconnected, after a twenty-year separation. She knows of Langley’s true relationship with young Louis, that Langley is his father – a fact of which Langley has not yet been apprised. Here’s the dialogue: […]
Story is fundamental to our lives: we tell stories all the time. About ourselves, each other, someone we don’t know, someone we make up. When we describe a book we’ve read or a film we’ve watched, we’re telling a story. In telling stories we are able to be wherever and whoever we wish. Imagination and Read more about Practice: Story-telling[…]
The One Thousand and One Arabian Nights is a weaving of hundreds of stories that Shahrazad told to her bloodthirsty husband King Shahryar every night. By keeping him hanging on the edge of his seat with suspense, he postponed his usual practice of eliminating his bride the morning after their wedding night just so he Read more about First Sentence[…]
Write a short story that is twelve sentences. Makes sure you have a beginning, middle, and end.
A story map is a picture of a story. Draw your sequence of events in five bubbles: beginning, beginning-middle, middle, middle-end, end. Think of set-up, climax, conclusion. Surround your story bubbles with smaller ones that depict your characters’ actions and reactions to the events. This is a great tool to help you organize your story. Read more about Create a Story Map[…]
Interview with Winslow Eliot
Posted on Why Waldorf Works
Last May, Kate Christensen won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction for her novel The Great Man. Kate graduated from Green Meadow Waldorf School in 1980, determined to be a novelist. She proceeded to write and publish four humorous, caustic, utterly compelling novels: In the Drink, Jeremy Thrane, The Epicure’s Lament, and The Great Man. All are well worth reading! Although she attended a Waldorf school for just her junior and senior years, her teachers and classes left a lasting impression on her. […]
Description evolves best from observation. Observation offers a way of watching your inner experiences reflected back in outer phenomena. Instead of writing “I felt gloomy,” you could write: “The clouds pressed in, prematurely darkening the bleak sky.” By strengthening your powers of observation you’ll be able to transform your plethora of confusing emotions into the Read more about Practice: Description[…]
Describe what you see out your window in minute detail. Do this at approximately the same time each day. Try to evoke a different mood on different days (gloomy, cheerful, excited…) just from the description itself – don’t mention any personal emotion.Describe what you see out your window in minute detail. Do this at approximately Read more about Looking Out of a Window[…]
Describe a rainy afternoon without using the word rain or saying anything about how you feel. But as you describe the rainy afternoon create a mood so the reader knows EXACTLY how you are feeling.
Look in the mirror and describe yourself as though you were someone else – in the third person. Do this several times, at different times of the day: you might find you discover seven different people.
Using details and interesting, unusual adjectives, describe a single room in your home from the point of view of someone who is considering purchasing the house and does not know you.
Where did I come from? Who am I? Where am I going? It’s amazing how little we know about ourselves, much less each other. As a relationship grows, layers of previously unexplored experiences and emotions emerge around the person we are getting to know. What is most important about someone’s life? Birth date, hair color, Read more about Practice: Biography[…]
Some Favorite Examples: “This is the story of my life, but it does not start with birth and childhood, nor with my early memories. The real beginning of life came to me with the taste of death, on the morning of 21st March, 1918.” Witness, by John Bennett “When in the winter of 1983 I Read more about Try Some Opening Lines[…]
Find a leaf or a sea shell and write a biographical story about it. 1. Plot: In your story describe where it came from, who is it, and where is it going. 2. Description: Include all five senses in your story. Include memory, regret, longing. 3. Revision: Insert adjectives before every noun, adverbs before every Read more about Biographical sketch[…]
Write down three questions you’d ask someone who just came off a boat.
It helps to think of dialogue as just ordinary conversation – that has a purpose. Monologue is a conversation one has with oneself. Dialogue is a conversation one has with someone else. There are always at leat two people involved in a dialogue. Your task as a writer is, through the voices having the conversation, Read more about Writing Dialogue[…]