Favorite Creative Writing Exercises?
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- Thinkswithink
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Favorite Creative Writing Exercises?
I wanted to create a forum where people could share their favorite writing exercises.
Here is one of mine:
Go to one of your favorite books and pick out a sentence that stands out to you.
Then start a whole new story with that sentence.
- tamara_mc41
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you have ten minutes to write a story. based on a random sentence.
we did it every day in creative writing class.
- ALynnPowers
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- ALynnPowers
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Feel free to use that--just remove what I put in quotes and fill it in your own way.
- Rabidwerewolfie
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- KS Crooks
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I'd probably think that you're completely brilliant... but I'm actually unfamiliar with both story lines. The thing about the berries sounds great, though!KS Crooks wrote:I like to review a book I read or re-watch a movie and think of an alternate storyline or ending. For example in Divergent what if Tris joined Erudite with her brother or at the end of The Hunger Games Katniss shoves the berries into Peta's mouth at the last second.
- moderntimes
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Long ago while taking creative writing classes I'd have various exercises tossed at me during class assignments. But in the real world, they seem artificial. Authors need to be able to write straight ahead on their subject and charge forward with the actual real novel or essay or whatever.
Want a great writing exercise? Try what I did: Having your newspaper editor assign you a dull as dust story to write and you better darn have it ready by the time that the paper goes to bed, too! By "go to bed" I don't mean the actual starting of the newspaper presses -- the article or interview or whatever you wrote is long since digested by the big machines in the basement. I mean the submission deadline when your editor comes over and says "Got that city council meeting done?" And the answer better be yes.
Or be on assignment and phone in a sports story w. accurate results (this was before PCs and email) and know that your story and game / race / event results will be read the next morning by a few thousand sleepy sports fans. The paper won't wait for you, either. That story has to be ready to dictate or fas before deadline.
After those experiences, I never had to subject myself to another artificial exercise. The real writing had taken over for sure.
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- moderntimes
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Ooh, ooh, I'll play:teacher_jane1 wrote:From John Gardner the great creative writing professor: describe a barn as seen by a man whose just lost his son in a war. You cannot say anything about war or death; the audience will not know what happened, or even if anything happened. Just describe through someone else's eyes. SO HARD.
My barn, with its flaking paint, its rusty doors that screech when you open or close them, and its hayloft... I never cared for the silly hayloft, it was never more to me than a place to dump hay, but... My wife wants me to rent it out, you know, for storage. The whole barn. She says it's wasted space. I bet she'd be even happier if I just torched it to collect the insurance money. I threatened to do that once and she just gave me a look.
I gaze up at the hayloft. No one's there, but I can barely hear laughter, a giggle, a squeal, and then silence. So empty. But the sun is shining into it, and motes of dust are trapped in its beam. Trapped, as if they're caught between parallel universes and are unsure if they want to join ours or drift back into another one. Always trapped. Each dust mote uncommitted to being here or there. Where is there? Where?
I shake my head and wipe the lost expression off my face. Just wasted space. Wasted space, wasted efforts, wasted everything.
Damn barn.
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Henry David Thoreau
- 7Princess
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