PROMPT: Pass the Notebook

Saturday at VoiceCATCH, we did a group story-writing exercise. To do this outside of the workshop environment, find a writing friend to trade notebooks (or e-mails) with.

Pass the Notebook

1. Each person writes one noun, one verb, one adjective, and one adverb* at the top of a sheet of paper. Try to make these words specific and interesting. For example, tulip is more specific than flower. To hang glide is more interesting than to walk. Pass the paper/notebook to the left.

2. Each person takes the words he/she has been given and uses them in the beginning of a story. Write for 7-10 minutes, then pass the notebooks to the left.

3. Next, everyone writes a middle section to the story he/she has been handed. Pass the notebooks to the left.

4. Finally, everyone writes an ending.

Wrap-up

In-class writing prompts often give us a good start. However, we can end up with a notebook full of beginnings, and not a single middle or end. This exercise forces middles and ends, good training for our writerly muscles.

Suggested Modification: When the VoiceCATCH crew tried this, many of our characters ended up, well, dead. The quickest way to end a story is to kill off the main character, but this isn’t necessarily the best or most creative way. For an extra challenge, add the following rule: No characters can die in the course of the story.

---

*Grammar Review

Noun – a person, place, thing, or idea
Verb – an action word
Adjective – a word that modifies a noun (a pink hat, ugly shoes)
Adverb – a word that modifies a verb, adjective, or another adverb (He spoke softly; The test was incredibly difficult; She sang very well.)

Bonus Exercise: Concise writing favors strong nouns and verbs over adjectives and adverbs.  For example, “The peacock struts” is better than “The colorful bird walks proudly.”

In today’s prompt, writers are asked to use one adjective and one adverb in the beginning sections of the stories. After the exercise is finished, go back over this section. Can you replace the adjectives/adverbs with better nouns/verbs (“peacock” instead of “colorful bird”)? Or simply delete the adverbs/adjectives (“She sang well” instead of “She sang very well”)?

PROMPT: Dialogue

VoiceCATCH is on winter break (returning January 4th!). In the meantime, we have a prompt requested by a VoiceCATCH member: Dialogue.

Writer’s Digest offers this guide on writing realistic dialogue and using it effectively in your story. Read the article, and then try your hand with this nifty dialogue generator from writingexercises.co.uk.

Bonus exercise: Find a comfortable spot in a public space (a coffee shop, lobby of a hotel, bus station, etc.). Write down verbatim some of the conversations you hear. Then study the dialogue in your favorite novel or story. How do the two compare?

Take a portion of the conversations you transcribed and try to use it in a piece of writing. What words and phrases help the story? What should be altered or cut?

PROMPT: Rewriting Frosty

VoiceCATCH is on hiatus for winter break, but here’s a prompt to keep those pens going.

This time of the year, we’re inundated with classic holiday tales. Try rewriting one or two of them. For example, what would happen if Frosty the Snowman turned into a hard-charging corporate executive? What if Rudolph crashed Santa’s sleigh?

Here are a few Christmas tales to give you a place to start, but of course stories from any tradition could be used.

A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens)
Frosty the Snowman
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Dr. Seuss)
Jack Frost
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
A Visit from St. Nicholas (‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, Clement Clarke Moore)

Rewriting classic stories in general can yield some great writing, and it’s fun. Also, many writers use this technique to address social concerns (sometimes called revisionist writing). For example, feminist writers have rewritten fairy tales to reclaim a voice traditionally dominated by men.

Even corporate America has co-opted the classic fairy tale to deliver business lessons. What can you do with classic stories? Here are a few publications you can preview on amazon.com to see a range of possibilities.

Goldilocks on Management:  27 Revisionist Fairy Tales for Serious Managers by Gloria Gilbert Mayer and Thomas Mayer

Jack and the Giant:  A Story Full of Beans by Jim Harris

Transformations by Anne Sexton

Wicked:  The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West  by Gregory Maguire

PROMPT: The Everyday and the Fantastical

We did two writing exercises at VoiceCATCH this morning, covering two extremes: the everyday moments of life, and the bizarre/fantastical.

1.  Write about an everyday moment. For inspiration, we read ”Adlestrop” by Edward Thomas, “Noise” by Alexander Long (found in The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry), and “Water” by Gary Snyder (found in Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems).

In “Adlestrop,” the narrator describes a brief stop of an express train, noting the willow trees, the hiss of steam from the train, the bare platform, the song of a blackbird. “Noise” depicts two characters and the narrator standing in line. In “Water,” the narrator dips his head and shoulders in a creek and comes face to face with a trout.

What simple moments can you find to write about? Think about your day: waiting for a bus or your commute into work/school, mealtime, the early morning hours, the time just before bed. Robert Pinsky in his discussion of “Adlestrop” (found in Singing School) suggests writing a piece about a name or word.

Bonus exercise: When you’re stuck, try writing six observations about what you can see, hear, smell, etc. around you. For an extended exercise, write six observations a day for a week. Then look back through your journal. Can you connect the details in some way to create a larger piece of writing?

2.  Write a piece that pushes reality into the unreal.  As an example, we read “The Experiment” by Jeffrey Skinner (found in Salt Water Amnesia, and also Field Guide to Prose Poetry).  In “The Experiment,” the narrator places his father in a bear suit, and the father appears to turn into a real bear.  What ordinary, or at least possible, scenario can you push into the unreal?

PROMPT: Gaining Perspective

Try writing a piece from the perspectives of two different characters.

At VoiceCATCH this morning, we looked at Louise Erdrich’s Tracks as an example. Erdrich uses two narrators in Tracks to tell the story of why an Anishinaabe Native American mother, Fleur, left her child at a government boarding school. The first narrator, Nanapush, is Fleur’s adoptive father. The second narrator, Pauline, worked with Fleur when they both lived off the reservation, and acts as an observer to many of the events in the novel. The narration alternates in chapters between Nanapush and Pauline. Through these, we learn about Fleur, Nanapush, Pauline and the community at large.

Choose one event/place/person/object and write about it from the perspectives of two characters. Here are a few ideas:

A brother and a sister (or two brothers, two sisters) write about their mother/father.

A brother and sister write about their home or hometown.

Two parties in a romantic relationship write about an unusual event.

A parent and a child write about an important event in the family’s history.

Two colleagues at work write about a third colleague.

Two characters who don’t know each other write about an event, place, person or object.

This may become a stand-alone piece in which you choose to keep both narrators. Or, if you later choose to tell the story through only one narrator,  it may serve as an exercise in understanding the characters’ actions and motivations.