PROMPT: If _________

Here’s a character development exercise we did last Saturday at VoiceCATCH. Try this with a writing buddy, although you can do step #2 yourself.

1. Create a character.  Give this character a name and jot down a few of his/her characteristics: personality and physical traits, favorite foods, hobbies, etc.

2. Trade notebooks with a partner.  Read about your partner’s character, and write an “if” or “when” sentence using the character described. For example, “If Beatrice were a butterfly, she’d be purple.”  Or, “When Louie took the garbage out, somehow the bag would always split, and he’d leave a trail of coffee grounds and eggshells from the kitchen to the curb.”

3. Return the notebooks to their original owners. Read the “if” or “when” statement your partner wrote for you. Begin a piece of writing using your new character, and try to incorporate your partner’s sentence at some point.

Wrap up: How did the “if” or “when” sentence change your understanding of the character? Did your partner see something you didn’t?

PROMPT: A Year in Review

Here’s an interesting exercise from last Saturday’s VoiceCATCH.

1. Pick up a coin at random.

2. Read the year. If it’s a year within your lifetime that you can remember, keep it. If not, select another coin.

3. Make a list of 15 things you remember from that year. Include moments from your personal life, and also events in media, politics, pop culture, etc.

4. Which item from your list captivates you the most? Use it to begin a piece of writing.

PROMPT: The Triggering Town

This week’s exercise is adapted from Richard Hugo’s The Triggering Town.

First, imagine a fictitious town. Visualize it and jot down notes about what you can see, hear, smell, etc.

Now, show this town to someone you trust (Hugo suggests a friend or lover). Use this to begin a piece of writing. Hugo points out, in his example, that he uses the word that over the (that silo instead of the silo), as you are on the scene and pointing.

Hugo discusses the challenges of using real-world places. If we set a poem or piece of fiction in our actual hometown, for example, we might not be able to let go of the factual details. He writes, “Your hometown often provides so many knowns… that the imagination cannot free itself to seek the unknowns.” What unknowns did you discover in this exercise?

PROMPT: First Lines and Three Step Stories

Here are a few prompts from VoiceCATCH over the last couple of weeks. Enjoy!

1.  First Lines

Take one of the following lines and use it to begin a piece of writing. If you’d like, you may change the line slightly to suit your purposes. Please see the list below for the pieces where these lines originated.

a) To describe my body walking I must go back to my mother’s body walking.

b) Over the horizon is another horizon. Down the dirt road is more dirt road.

c) I keep thinking about the taxidermist, the one I met at the bar, who scoops road kill from Route 28 with her apron on.

d) Filling her compact and delicious body with chicken paprika, she glanced at me twice.

Taken from:

a) “To Describe My Body Walking” by Yona Harvey, found in Hemming the Water.

b) This Is What They Say by M. Bartley Seigel.

c) “Molly” by Leslie Anne McIlroy, found in PANK 9.

d) Dream Song #4 of John Berryman’s The Dream Songs.

2.  Three Step Stories

This prompt is adapted from T. Alan Broughton’s “A Little Nightmusic: The Narrative Metaphor,” found in The Practice of Poetry, edited by Robin Behn and Chase Twichel.

 1. Recall a brief moment or scene that carried, for you, a high degree of emotional intensity (it does not need to be a complete story). Jot down notes about that incident. As Broughton writes, “Try to pick details that give you its tone, the emotional core.”

2. Now invent an incident that is not your own but is set in the same location as above. Strive for a tone that contrasts significantly with the moment from #1.

3. Write a narrative (a story) that combines #1 and #2, using as many of the words and images you’ve accumulated as possible.

Broughton writes, “This exercise can result in the kind of suggestive complexity that enriches any narrative,” and discusses the “tyranny” of the statement, “But that was the way it happened.” How can you take an emotionally intense moment of your life and transform it?

PROMPT: Memory and Emotion

Last Saturday at VoiceCATCH, we mined our memories for our writing. Here’s how:

First, number your paper from 1-25. Then write down 25 memories from your life. Try to do this relatively quickly, without getting hung up on any one.

Then, go back through your list and assign an emotion to each memory. It’s the emotion of an experience that will connect with readers, rather than the experience itself. As Italian writer Cesare Pavese said, “We do not remember days, we remember moments.”

Choose the memory that’s the most intriguing to you, and use that to begin a piece of writing.

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We also looked at three books that use memory in different ways. Marjorie Agosín’s Of Earth and Sea is a collection of vignettes that together create a memoir of Agosín’s childhood in Chile.

The Watsons Go to Birmingham–1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis is a fictional novel for 8-12 year olds (also good for adults) that reads like a memoir. One wonders how much was informed or inspired by the author’s life.

Lyn Hejinian’s My Life is a collection of prose poems where each poem addresses a year of the author’s life. My Life is also interesting in that Hejinian has revised and republished it at different stages of her life.