NOVEMBER 2024 - Stephen King

Exercise #1 - Idea Generation

Think of your own "What If?" scenarios to generate story ideas. Below are some from Stephen King, to start you off.

What if a policeman in a remote Nevada town went berserk and started killing everyone on sight?

What if vampires invaded a small New England village?

What if a cleaning woman suspected of a murder she got away with (her husband) fell under suspicion for a murder she did not commit (her employer)?

Exercise #2 - Random words, phrases and ideas

If you already track random words, phrases and ideas in your Writer's notebook, share a couple with us. If you never have done this - give it a try in November and see how it works.

Exercise #3 - Five "whys"

Start with a final event and ask why this event has occurred. Answer the question with "because..." Then ask, "Why?" again and continue the process until you have asked five "whys?". Have you worked your way back to the opening point of the story? Every time you write an answer to a "why" you are likely to find a character emerging. You will end up having formed a number of characters and the basic structure of your story. Write the event and the five whys and the because.

Exercise #4 - Planning

Structure this plan for your story ideas. On the left half of your page, list very brief details of the key events in your story.  From these, pick out the three most impactful events in the story and put the first under "Beginning", the second under "Middle" and the last under "End". Does the story still begin and end where you are expecting or does this process offer any alternative perspectives on the structure?

October 2024 - Scary Stuff

 OCTOBER 2024 - SCARY STUFF

We are not looking at any other writer's except ourselves this month. Here are the exercises to work on:

EXERCISE #1

For a story to have tension, the writer must create characters with depth that the reader can empathize with. Create your own spooky character. Create a profile of that character – what is their name? Personality? Body Language? What do you know about them? Strengths and weaknesses? What makes us care about them? Then, using your profile – write a brief description of your spooky character in a way that makes the reader want to know more.

 

EXERCISE #2

Every great story needs a sizzling first line or two to drag the reader in. Create a great start for these topics:

·         Trick or Treating is dangerous

·         Ghosts do exist

·         Vampires versus Werewolves

·         Halloween is better than Christmas

·         Being scared is fun

 

EXERCISE #3

I personally hate writing prompts like these – but for this month let’s give them a go. Write a paragraph or two for each prompt.  Here are the prompts (do one or do all):

·         What is the scariest thing that ever happened to you? Why was it so scary?

·         What is the best Halloween costume you have ever had? What made it so special?

·         What is something that used to scare you, but no longer does? Why was it so scary?

·         Write the story of one Halloween night from the perspective of the Jack o Lantern on your front porch.

September 2024 - Murakami

 Haruki Murakami - September 2024

Murakami is known for Magical realism and surrealism and his best known work is "Kafka on the Shore" 2002.

Exercise #1 - Murakami Metaphor

In his novel "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" Murakami uses metaphor to describe loneliness: "The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades." Murakami gives the book a sinister edge with the unexpected association of page and razor blade.

Think of an everyday object, perhaps a door, and create a metaphor that will make the door more sinister, associating it with loneliness, or anger, or despair.  Then write a sentence using this metaphor to bring out strong emotion. 

Object - 

Sentence -

Exercise #2 - Onomatopoeia

When spoken aloud, onomatopoeic words imitate the sound they are describing. This enables the reader to "hear" what is happening and can bring them further into the writer's world. Onomatopoeic words fall into five categories relating to the exercise.

Write some onomatopoeic words relating to each of the five categories. Then create a sentence using one or more of the words you have written.

Water

Air

Collisions

Voice

Animals

Exercise #3 - A different Perspective

Does a narrator have to be a person?

Try writing from the perspective of a building, a boat, or a tree. Let them describe as a first-person narrator the things that go on around them. What have they witnessed in their history? Who has lived or died in the building? Has the tree witnessed emotional moments that have long since passed?

Exercise #4 - World Records

Writing the fantastical in mundane tones is one of the marks of magical realism. Make up some world records that might appear in the Guinness Book of Records.  Think of extremes: the smallest, tallest, highest...Write about the records and the people, actions and things involved, as if they are facts.

August 2024 - Carey

 PETER CAREY EXERCISES FOR AUGUST 2024

EXERCISE #1 - CAREY SIMILES

Peter Carey is an avid and adept user of the simile. Below are three Carey similes, with the simile section left out.

Read and complete the line with your own simile. Be as imaginative as you like. At the end of this are the completed Carey similes. Compare them with yours or use them for inspiration. Can you improve on Carey's offerings?

The hair...that frizzy nest which grew outwards, horizontal like

He were still smiling but his voice were hard as

A cormorant broke the surface, like

The hair...that frizzy nest which grew outwards, horizontal like a wind-blown tree in an Italianate painting.

He were still smiling but his voice were hard as a spoon rattling in a metal cup.

A cormorant broke the surface, like an improbable idea tearing the membrane between dreams and life.

EXERCISE #2 - COLLECTING NAMES

Thinking of names for characters, places, shops, restaurants, and so on in your writing can be both difficult and fun. A name can offer the reader an immediate impression of a character or place.

Collect interesting names here: people you meet, places you visit, towns you read in the newspaper, nicknames, pet names...record your favorites.

EXERCISE #3 - CHILDHOOD ROOM

Think of a room from your childhood home. Close your eyes and visualize the room. Think about the look of it, the sound of it, and, if smoke from your granddad's pipe drifted into your bedroom, perhaps the smell of it.  Write a description of the room.

EXERCISE #4 - DIALOGUE WITH HISTORY

Look up an event that happened in the decades listed below. Place yourself in the year of the event and imagine yourself either in a crowd of people, somebody's house, or somewhere else, speaking to somebody. Try to convey a sense of the time. Does the decade or placement of the event change the way the person speaks? Write a short piece of dialogue next to each decade.

1690s

1870s

1910s

1980s

JULY 2024 - Margaret Atwood

 JULY - Margaret Atwood

Exercise #1 - Washed-Up objects

Make a list of five or more objects that might be washed up on the shore of a beach. Do any of them trigger ideas for your writing?

Exercise #2 - Sense of Touch

Communicating how something feels to the touch need not always be through associated descriptive words, such as "soft skin." Making unusual associations to describe how something feels can make the sensation of touch more powerful.  The description might be relating to how something else normally feels. For example, water can feel not only wet but like the touch of a loved one, a caress.  In the "The Penelopiad", Margaret Atwood writes "Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress."

Write down a few objects or materials that you might touch. Next to this write an adjective to describe what it feels like to the touch. Then write down how it makes you feel when you touch it. Then write a sentence that includes a description of how it makes you feel when you touch it.

Exercise #3 - Four Seasons

Imagine a setting and describe the place four times, changing each description according to thge season.

Winter - Spring - Summer - Fall

Exercise #4 - The view from the top

Write a short 2 pager using the following line for inspiration:

"The view from the top..."

JUNE 2024 - ANGELOU

 Our author for June is Maya Angelou.

Angelou was an autobiographer, poet, dancer, screenwriter, actress, film director, honorary professor and civil rights activist. Her primary work I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) broke new ground, challenging established ideas of what is considered autobiography.  She used fictional devices to illuminate her work. Like a writer of fiction she takes the most intriguing and entertaining elements of three or four people from her life and merges them into one person. And her plot structures do the same. 

EXERCISE 1 - A Composite Character

Think of the other people in this writing group. Write a brief description of their key character traits. Take the most interesting traits from each of them and fuse them together to form a new character.  Write a character profile of your new composite character. Have fun and play nice!

EXERCISE 2 - Childhood Shoes

Write a short piece inspired by a pair of shoes you remember from your childhood.

EXERCISE 3 - Word Associations: Character Traits

Write down four words that you associate with the character type: KILLER. Then write four words that you associate with the character type: NUN. Then think about them from a different angle and write down four more words that are new and unexpected associations with that person. Finally, create two more character types and create the key and unexpected associations. 

May 2024 - Flannery O'Connor

 FLANNERY O'CONNOR for May

Exercise #1 - A backward-walking chicken

At the age of five Flannery appeared on Pathe news showing how she had taught a chicken to walk backward. This started a lifelong love of birds. She raised chickens, emus, ostriches, toucans and peacocks. She used the motif of the peacock in many of her works.

Write about an unusual childhood memory. Try to really get back into the moment. What words evoke the sights, the sounds, and the smells? What were your thoughts? How did you feel?

Exercise #2 - Chekhov's Gun

In many of her stories Flannery used "foreshadowing". This is also known as Chekhov's gun rule:  "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off."  As well as a rule to ward off red herrings, Chekhov's gun rule when employed effectively can create a "foreshadowing," giving the reader an idea of what will happen in advance. Subtle associations can add texture to writing.

First, describe a major event that is going to occur in a a story you may be planning or have already written. Then associate an image with this event : an obvious example is "a shooting" - for example, a peanut sized hole on the front of a man's t-shirt. Then write the scenario in which this associated image is contained.  Finally write the sentence, paragraph or dialogue containing this scenario to create a "foreshadowing" of events.

MAJOR EVENT:

ASSOCIATION IMAGE:

ASSOCIATION SCENARIO:

FORESHADOWING:

Exercise #3 - A train journey

In her short story, "The Train (1948), Flannery O'Connor describes what the main character, Haze, sees from the train window. "Now the train was greyflying past instants of trees and quick spaces of field and a motionless sky that sped darkening away in the opposite direction."

Imagine you are on a train. Describe what you see and any thoughts triggered by what you observe. Where is the train going to or leaving from? Who are the passengers? What do you see from the train's window?