For all the writers out there

[ggjunkie33]

I just thought of a fun sort of meme thing I can do!

SO:

For all the writers out there who have writer's block, need new ideas, or just want to play around with their writing - give me a number between 1 and 201 and I will give you a writing exercise from my creative writing class's textbook! Some of them are really, really cool and pretty

Comments

[poppetawoppet]

(OOH WHAT'S THE TEXTBOOK)

19

[ggjunkie33]

See above, bb! Just edited the post so it says the title and author of the book.

#19: Canned Film

Write a very short synopsis of an imaginary film, as if writing for one of those video anthologies - perhaps 10,000 Films in a Nutshell. Concentrate on images as much as you can in this summary of a plot or an interesting combination of images and time. 300 words.

(If you want, it has more info that they put near this, but it's more general stuff that relates to this and is not part of the exercise instructions.)

[claire_kay]

hmm.

201.

;)

[ggjunkie33]

:D

So #201 apparently is actually a 'make your own exercise' one, so I can either a) give you what #201 says and maybe it'll inspire you to create your own exercise/do something different, or b) you can pick another number and I can give you what that one says.

LOL I apparently need to look at these before I put them up as options.

[claire_kay]

Okay. LOL.
ahm.

17 :)

[ggjunkie33]

Ooh, this is a fun one!

#17: Synesthesia

Use synesthesia in a short scene - surreptitiously, without drawing too much attention to it - to convey to your reader an important understanding of some ineffable sensory experience. Use sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. 600 words.

And if you don't know what synesthesia is, it's like when a letter has a color and a sound has a smell, etc. As the book describes it, it is "a description of one kind of sensation in terms of another; color is attributed to sound, odor to colors, sound to odors, and so on".

If you want the book also provides an example of how a writer used it in his work, and I can show you that.

[diane_mckay]

23! I want 23!

[ggjunkie33]

Oooh, I like this one :D

[ggjunkie33]

:D

#149: Rules of the Game

Write a short section of a story that follows the rules of a game. You can take already existing games, like chess, Monopoly, or poker. Use the rules of one of these games as if they were real, filling in names for characters - in Monopoly, perhaps calling one character John Boot or Old Battleship or Dog's Breath. Play along loosely or strenuously, letting characters move through the game or board as if in a life of their own. Try not to make this too obvious. Part of the fun of doing this exercise is to depart at a certain point from the rules or at least to make your readers think you have departed. 1,000 words.

(There is more general commentary the author provides on this exercise if you want to see if, but it does not include any more instructions.)

[bea_tricks]

13 :)

[ggjunkie33]

:)

#13: God

The spectrum of narrative perspectives goes from benighted, flawed, unreliable first-person narrations to godlike omniscience - all-knowing understanding of everyone's thoughts and deepest motives. But God's POV is also, presumably, a first-person narration - or perhaps God speaks occasionally in the royal we or the second-person plural. What would God see? How would God know a very ordinary set of events - or how could mere human readers see all that a god (let alone God) sees? Since God should know how to be efficient and get right to the point, do this exercise in only 200 words.

(There is also more random general commentary by the author on this exercise, if you want to see it. All the instructions for the exercise are in the paragraph above though.)