MAY Vonnegut

 MAY - KURT VONNEGUT

Born November 1, 1922, Died April 11, 2007. Counter Culture, Satire, Sci fi.

Kurt Vonnegut is one of the great postwar American writers, best known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. With a uniquely unconventional style, he blends fiction, commentary and autobiography. Raised  in the Great Depression, Vonnegut was taken out of private school after his father's business collapsed and his mother became alcoholic and drug addicted. He graduated high school and studied bio chemistry at Cornell University. He was captured at the Battle of the Bulge during WW2 and was held captive in a prisoner of war camp. He survived the bombing of Dresden because his captivity was 60 feet below ground in an old slaughterhouse. This experience punctuated much of his work. 

Despite the experimental nature of much of his writing, Vonnegut's sentences always remained straightforward, revealing character or advancing story. His work meshed science fiction and reality, yet was literary, dark and yet funny, classic and yet counter-culture, kind hearted yet detached. In his novels he often used the repetition of a short phrase over and over. This combination of simplicity, irony and rue is very much in the Vonnegut vein.

EXERCISE #028 - Extreme versions of you

Vonnegut's alter ego, Kilgore Trout, allowed him to stretch the dimensions of his own character.

Think about your own characteristics. You have a wealth of elements and quirks that form you own character. Think of one of these elements and take it to an extreme. Create a fictional character based on an extreme version of yourself. Who are they? What is their name? What major characteristics do they have? 

Write a 300 word monologue in the voice of an "extreme version of you", placing them in, or reporting on, an extreme situation. Thinking about yourself, and building fictional characters around elements of your own character, can be a great source of inspiration.

EXERCISE #029 - Dialogue with the future.

In many of his stories, Kurt Vonnegut experiments with structure by using time travel as a plot device. 

Place yourself in one of the years listed below and imagine yourself in a crowd of people, somebody's house, or somewhere else, speaking to somebody.  Write a piece of dialogue.

2100

2500

4000

100,000

EXERCISE #030 - Expanding Dialogue

Rewrite the line of dialogue shown below five times, expanding the level of detail, and perhaps changing the meaning, on each rewrite. After the final rewrite, add a line of dialogue from the other person in response.

"I've never let you down before."

EXERCISE #031 - Word Progression

Starting underneath the word "cardiac arrest", write a continuous list of words, each word an association of the previous one, until you reach the 15 words. Do the same with the other three words:

Mountain

Ballerina

Despair

Then, constuct a sentence, long or short, containing the four words at the end of each list.

APRIL - Iris Murdock

APRIL - MURDOCK

Exercise #024 - The sea, the sea

Note as many adjectives, nouns, and verbs as you can think of associated with the sea.  Then look back at the words and write down any interesting word combinations that you find. This process of word generation can lead to images and ideas that may otherwise remain untapped.

Exercise #025 - Zeugmas

A zeugma is a sentence where multiple shades of meaning in a single word or phrase are used in relation to two other parts of a sentence. 

Example: "He had been married, but his wife had left him childless and long ago..."

"They covered themselves with dust and glory"

"When I address Fred I never have to raise either my voice or my hopes."

Write some sentences incorporating a zeugma. Is it a device that might find a place in your work?

Exercise #026 - Random Place

Find a random proper noun from a newspaper or magazine (scan articles for capital letters).  Use this as an imaginary setting.  What does this place look like, who lives there, and what happens there?

Exercise #027 - "Sunlight...awaits"

Write a short piece, starting with the word "Sunlight" and ending with the word "awaits" and including in the body of your writing the following words:  Fridge magnet, Venerable, Artistic.

MARCH 2026 - BURROUGHS

 WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS - MARCH 2026

EXERCISE #21 - The William S. Burroughs exercise

Record encounters you have during a day (or days) - whether they are on holiday, at work, climbing Mt. Everest - breaking them down Burrough's style. One column will contain simply an account of your trip, what happened, what was said and what you overheard, what other things you did. Next column will present your memories; that is, what you are thinking of at the time, what memories are activated by the encounters. And the third column, the reading column, gives quotations from any book you are currently reading from.  As you collect all aspects of the encounters you will build up plenty of material to work with and they may trigger an idea or turn into a piece of work.

EXERCISE #22 - Cut-ups

Pick a non-fiction book and write down five random sentences from anywhere in the book. Mix them up and splice them together in some way to make a new, coherent paragraph.

EXERCISE #23 - Dialogue Clutter

It is essential to avoid clutter within dialogue. It is equally important for each line of dialogue to push the action forward and/or develop character. Much of what we say in real life would be useless on the page.

Imagine two people bumping into each other and starting a conversation, whether it is in the street, at a wedding, a funeral or wherever. Write dialogue between the two people, avoiding any meaningless clutter.  Think about why their meeting might be less than small talk.

FEBRUARY 2026 - Nabokov

 FEBRUARY 2026 - Nabokov

Prompt #018

    Wordplay

Vladimir Nabokov is known for the playfulness of his language. Nabokov takes words, pulls them apart, twists them, and makes something new. 

Exercise: Describe something in an unusual way by forming an unexpected association.

Prompt #019

    Alliteration

The repetition of sounds in a series of words creates rhythm and the visual similarity of the words affects the focus of the reader. 

Exercise: Write down some words using alliteration. Start off following James Joyce's lead and then continue from there.

"His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead." Joyce

soul        swooned        slowly    snow           falling     faintly     faintly       falling

Prompt #020

    Unusual Comparisons

Forming similes by making unusual comparisons can enlighten an image and last in the memory.

Exercise: Write some similes creating an unusual comparison between two things.

JANUARY 2026 - HEMINGWAY

JANUARY 2026 - HEMINGWAY

 #014 - Hemingway’s Iceberg

Start by writing a detailed character profile. You might imagine you are at a dinner party and describing the person sitting opposite you or maybe choose a family member. Once you have written the detailed profile, try to convey the same key observations, character traits, and backstory in only a couple of lines - enough to achieve the same sentiment, if not more, “below the water line”

#015 - Six-word story

While sitting around a table with other writers, Ernest Hemingway was challenged as part of a bet to write a six-word novel. He came up with:

“For Sale: Baby Shoes, never worn.” - He won the bet.

Write your own six word story. The story needs to project a backstory and perhaps a future story. In “Baby shoes” we can see a pat, a baby’s death. And we see a present: selling the shoes either due to hardship or for closure.

#016 - Pace

Choose a piece of writing you have done previously that has at least ten continuous sentences. Or write a similar length piece describing a journey you have made.  Read your writing back, paying close attention to the rhythm of the sentences and whether you linger over certain parts and stop abruptly at others. Is there a certain beat to it? Is there a constant “stop, start” of short sentences, or not time to come up for air with numerous long sentences? Perhaps consider rewriting the piece, interchanging long and short sentences and see the effect of pace and rhythm.

#017 - A historical crowd

Imagine you are in a crowd of people in a place of your choosing in each of the years listed below. Describe the crown and write down as dialogue anything that you hear people say or shout.

1205

1855

1925

1965

2026

December 2025 - William Faulkner

 In honor of America's foremost Southern Gothic Modernist

Exercise #011 - An Authentic Voice

Put yourself into the mind of a character who has a unique voice.  This can be a person you know, someone chosen from the movies or television, or you can create your own character. Write an interior monologue recounting a story, or talking about a subject of your choosing (real or imagined), or from the following prompts. Allow the words and grammar to fit the manner and nature of the person you inhabit>

PROMPTS:

1 You are walking along a dusty road. In the distance, you see a woman walking toward you. As she passes you, she says nothing, but hands you a letter from her late husband and walks on.

2 You are stuck in a traffic jam, with the sun beaming down and the air conditioning broken.

3 Drinking black coffee in a roadside cafe. There is no milk or sugar.

Exercise #012 - Crossing the River

Two people are discussing how to get to the other side of a river with no obvious way across. Write a passage of dialogue between these two people. They have strong colloquial diction. Imagine the sound of their voices and write the dialogue so that the reader can interpret the diction and hear their voices. Allow yourself the freedom to tear the words up. Keep the treatment of words consistent and ensure they remain legible and coherent.  For this exercise keep all the dialogue qualifiers simple (e.g.. "he said" and "she said") Don't use any adverbs to qualify the dialogue such as "she said angrily." Instead, show the reader the anger in the voice from what is said and how it is said.

Exercise #013 - Inspiration from the art world

Write a short piece inspired by a painting, sculpture, or any other form of artwork of your choosing. Think about the senses evoked within the artwork- the sounds, the tastes, the smells. What are the stories behind painted objects or people? Do any abstract forms trigger your own abstract thoughts and memories?

November 2025 Writer's Group Exercises

 NOVEMBER 2025 - Franz Kafka

EXERCISE #007 - "As Gregor Samsa awoke..."

Can you come up with a killer first line? A line to shock, intrigue, or frame an entire story?

Take a piece of your writing or a story you have considered, or are planning to write. Or create a new idea for a story. Try to write an opening line with impact, which will lead the reader straight into the story, and inform them of what might be to come.

EXERCISE # 008 - Juxtaposition

Putting together images or thoughts that are not normally associated will create juxtapositions that remain in the reader's mind.  For example, a homeless man wearing a weathered tuxedo.

Make a note of anything strange and unusual, weird and wonderful, that you see, hear, smell, read, taste of touch. In your notes, begin to look for connections. Put together disconnected images that juxtapose. Form similes and metaphors. Look out for new characters and character descriptions.

EXERCISE #009 - Revealing character

In the following descriptions there are strong feelings of a writer noting down the facts of a man (or woman) and his/her life. The writer is present to the reader. The only presence should be the characters in the story, the writer's voice should be implicit.

Take the facts in each Character study and write them into a description of the character that is revealed through the actions and strong narration and/or dialogue.

CHARACTER #1 - A traveling salesman. He is 6 feet 4v inches tall. He has a bad back because he spends so many nights sleeping in cheap hotels with uncomfortable beds. He is divorced and has two young children, a boy and a girl.

CHARACTER #2 - A doctor. She is married and has a one-year old baby boy. Her husband is a stay at home dad. She has just finished a 20 hour shift and is beginning to hallucinate.