For one week try this practice at around the same time every day: describe the view outside your window. Try to be as observant and detached as possible, and make your feelings absolutely clear only through description. In other words, don’t say “I felt” or “It seemed scary.” Say “The sky is heavy” or “a Read more about The Window[…]
Newsweek recently devoted a good portion of its content to “What to Read Now. And Why.” http://www.newsweek.com/id/204300 . It’s a fun read, but most interestingly for me was the editors’ choice for number one: The Way We Live Now, by Anthony Trollope. This is how Newsweek summarizes the tale: “The title says it all. Trollope’s Read more about Apropos Anthony Trollope[…]
Write an old-fashioned love letter to your ideal lover (don’t have an actual person in mind – make someone up. Have fun with this one.) The letter doesn’t have to be long, but it needs to be full of feeling, longing, compliments, insights! Think of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnet “How do I Love Thee?” but Read more about The Love Letter[…]
Fables are short stories that end with some sort of pithy moral. Often fables feature anthropomorphized animals (or even plants or elements) … Whether the character is a fox or a grape or the North Wind, it can speak, feel, and somehow exemplifies the maxim with which the tale concludes. For warm-ups, read one of Read more about Write a fable[…]
Describe a rainy afternoon without mentioning rain. Create a mood – of loneliness, despair, anticipation, coziness: you might even find yourself segueing into the beginning of a story. Try describing a rainy afternoon again, and create a completely different mood.
Try this exercise every day this week: write down a dream. Many people say they can’t remember any dreams, but if you do this exercise for just the next seven days you’ll discover something interesting: You DO start remembering them. Have a notebook right by your bed. While still in your hypnopompic state, write down Read more about Dreams – recalling them backwards[…]
Stimulating memory is similar to stimulating dream life. By tapping into deeply subconscious realms, we release thoughts and feelings we may be hardly aware we even have. Writing about dreams and memories is like a magic key to a kingdom. Here’s the first key: Write your very first memory in the third person. Try to Read more about Stimulating memory[…]
The Five Paragraph Essay – BACKWARDS If you’re having a hard time feeling the flow and confidence that mastering the five-paragraph essay offers, try doing it another way: start from Act V and move backwards to the introductory paragraph of Act I. Act V: The Resolution or Conclusion. This paragraph resolves the story, the experiment, Read more about 5 Paragraphs – Backwards[…]
The 5-Paragraph Essay Fun writing exercises are … FUN. And everyone knows that mastering the five paragraph essay is essential to solid, coherent writing skills. Sometimes it’s been so painstakingly drilled into kids that college educators plead with high school teachers not to wear out students with the clichéd, boring style that permeates all their Read more about Practice: 5 paragraphs[…]
Chess Pieces From the time I was eight years old till I was well into my teens I played chess with my father practically every evening. Over the years, each chess piece became imbued with characteristics that brought each game to vivid life. Bishops tended to be pretty conservative. You knew as soon as one Read more about Chess Pieces[…]
Writing a Letter Here’s a practice that’s practically obsolete: letter-writing. That’s okay – pretend you’re living during the last century when letter-writing was pretty commonplace. Here’s the basic block structure for a letter: Address Date Dear Friend, Body of text. Sincerely, Your name Now write a letter to a fictional friend: You’ve just arrived in Read more about Letter Writing[…]
Despite what you’ve been told, eavesdropping is a writer’s most valuable resource. For several days in a row write down a conversation that you overhear, without describing the people who are speaking. Use your ears, not your eyes, to imagine the speaker. Practice trying to remember phrases that are used. As you write them down, Read more about Eavesdropping[…]
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[…]
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.