Try These Excercises
Bibliography:
-Jane Burroway, copyright 2003 by Addison Wesley Longman Inc. "Imaginative Writing- The Elements of Craft -". A Penguin Academics book.
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Try This:
Write a scene in which two characters on a journey are interrupted, stopped, stranded, or forced to detour.(pg 356)
Try This:
Make two lists, one of human nonverbal sounds, one of nonhuman sounds with emotional potential in our reaction to them. Make the lists long. Keep adding to the lists. Think about ways to use them.
Try This:
Take any paragraph of fiction or memoir in your journal and play with the idea of putting it onstage. Where would it take place; what would the characters say; how would they be dressed, how would they behave?
Try This:
Write a poem in the voice of someone you know, speaking publicly--at a birth, funeral, graduation, confirmation, wedding, promotion, retirement, or other significant event. Let the persona say what actually could not or would not be said.
Try This:
Make a list of things a character or persona in your piece might fear. Add a scene, line, or image in which a character or persona is in great fear.
or:
Show the character doing something genuinely dangerous. But the character/persona is not afraid. Why not?(pg 223)
Try This:
State your idea in a single sentence. Reduce it to a word. Express it in an image. Express it in a line of dialogue that one of your characters might say. Probably none of these things will appear in your finished piece, but they will help you focus. Are you clear about what you're writing about? Does it need thinking and feeling through again?(pg 224)
Try This:
Pick (a) sentence from the paragraph and turn it into a scene.
or:
Identify a summary in your own journal. Pick a sentence and trun it into a scene.(pg 238)
Try This:
Write about a troubling or traumatic incident without mentioning it directly.(pg 261)
Try This:
Put two characters of your story in a situation in which they must say less or other than they mean. Reveal the protagonist's true feeling through thoughts, and the other character's through gesture, expression, or other external sign.(pg 282)
Try This:
Write the story you're not allowed to write--the story that would get you into trouble.(pg 302)
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