A Longer Version of a Short Story

Here goes: Try for as close to a full draft as possible. Looking forward to seeing your writing before next week's class.

Bored? Fearful?

Try in 50 to 100 words or so to "show" a bored person without saying it directly. Do the same for someone who is fearful. Don't be boring!

Stealing a Character (or two!)

Take one (or more than one; you might even take two from different scenes and different students) and put him or her in a new situation. Try to reflect the personality of the character in the new setting as well as you can. The motorcycle father meets the blonde bombshell?!

Have fun with it. Once you've done it, you might feel inspired to work on your story by adding more to your current scene.

Fibonacci Poem

Try a Fibonacci poem: the Fibonacci progression is a mathematical formula that starts with 0 and 1 and then builds by adding numbers that are equal to the sum of the previous two numbers. The famous sequence begins as follows: 0-1-1-2-3-5-8.

A Fibonacci poem, or Fib, is a six-line poem (though, rarely, some are longer, and multiple-stanza versions are sometimes seen). Each line contains the same number of syllables as the corresponding digit in the Fibonacci sequence: 0 - 1- 1- 2- 3- 5- 8. (The unspoken first line of each Fib is silence.) —Patchwork Farm Writing Prompt

Is it really a poem? Perhaps! In any case, it is a good mental exercise to write in such a short form. Make every word count and if you want (Linda, I'm thinking of you here) rhyme a word or two for practice. Write more than one if the spirit moves you . . .

Imitating Sentences from Established Writers

To make things easier, I've made a Word file with all of our contributions in one place. Work on your imitations in Word and then paste your results into a comment here. Do as many (or as few) as you wish. Be sure to include the original for comparison.

Established Writers' Sentences

Story: One Scene (or more!)

Follow Janet Fitch's advice to write one scene for a story. Base it on any plot you wish (feel free to steal from Linda or Tiffany or Marco or me). Or, create your own.

Linda's Scene

a) A scene starts and ends in one place at one time (the Aristotelian unities of time and place–this stuff goes waaaayyyy back). b) A scene starts in one place emotionally and ends in another place emotionally. Starts angry, ends embarrassed. Starts lovestruck, ends disgusted. c) Something happens in a scene, whereby the character cannot go back to the way things were before. Make sure to finish a scene before you go on to the next. Make something happen.