Writing Course
Today was the first day of the writing course. There were about 16 of us there.
The course leader got us to perform five exercises. The first was to write something that started with the words "he/she opened the cupboard...". The second was to write about a character arriving somewhere. The third was to write about an experience from childhood (which I nearly couldn't do because I couldn't remember anything at the age of 4). The fourth built on that, replacing the third exercise's first person perspective with a random third person perspective. The fifth took the random character of your partner and asked you to combine them with your one in a new setting. The last one went really well.
Apart from that, there were lots of interesting discussions about some aspects of writing, and there was a really practical bit of advice about opening lines. The trick is to get an opening line that sums up the book. Usually this is very hard, but as you write, you tend to get a line that does that, and you can start the book off with that. Some writers say that you should even take the first few lines/paragraphs/pages and get rid of them entirely.
The course leader got us to perform five exercises. The first was to write something that started with the words "he/she opened the cupboard...". The second was to write about a character arriving somewhere. The third was to write about an experience from childhood (which I nearly couldn't do because I couldn't remember anything at the age of 4). The fourth built on that, replacing the third exercise's first person perspective with a random third person perspective. The fifth took the random character of your partner and asked you to combine them with your one in a new setting. The last one went really well.
Apart from that, there were lots of interesting discussions about some aspects of writing, and there was a really practical bit of advice about opening lines. The trick is to get an opening line that sums up the book. Usually this is very hard, but as you write, you tend to get a line that does that, and you can start the book off with that. Some writers say that you should even take the first few lines/paragraphs/pages and get rid of them entirely.