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.

OCTOBER 2025

 

OCTOBER 2025

This month we look at the writing of Virginia Woolf, born in 1882 and died in 1941, she was a Modernist writer of novels and short stories and the foremost feminist writer of the twentieth century. She revolutionized narrative voice by mixing in character's inner voices, thus exploring psychological and emotional motives in the narration. Her language is intensely lyrical with her prose feeling most full of poetry.

EXERCISE #004 - A Writer's Diary

Virginia Woolf said that her diaries brought the freedom to "dance like nobody is watching: to her writing. Try her method of free writing.

Exercise: Either in longhand or typed, write your thoughts on whatever subject you like. Don't worry about spelling or grammar, or how it reads - you don't even need to read it back to yourself. Think about whether this is something you might like to practice every day in your writing journal. 1 or2 pages will be perfect.

EXERCISE #005 - Point of View

It is important to write effectively from different viewpoints. In her novel Orlando, Woolf writes from both the male and female perspective within the same character.

Exercise: A man is sitting at a table on his won in a crowded Italian restaurant. A woman from another table gets up, walks over to his table, and sits down opposite him. Write three versions of the same scene from three different perspectives.

    1. Write this scene in the first person from the perspective of one of the characters.

    2. Write this scene in thee third person.

    3 Write this scene entirely in dialogue.

EXERCISE #006 - Little Daily Miracles

Exercise: Write a short piece using the following line from Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse for inspiration:

"Little Daily Miracles"

SEPTEMBER 2025

 Prompt from James Joyce

Joyce is arguably the most influential writer of the twentieth century. His masterpiece, Ulysses (1922) challenged the traditional  rules of style and form, and changed the landscape of modern literature.

#001 - Interior monologue: Yourself

The interior monologue is the thought process of a character written from their perspective. A method of writing an interior monologue is through "stream of consciousness," allowing any conscious thought that comes to mind to be written down. In stream-of-consciousness mode, sentence structure and style need not be considered during the process of writing.

Write an interior monologue using stream of consciousness from your own perspective (i.e., write down the flow of your own conscious thoughts.) You might like to use Joyce's method of writing without punctuation, with each thought a continuation of the last, until you reach the end of the page. 

#002 - Finnegans Wake

In Finnegans Wake Joyce uses an incredible amount of wordplay. He enjoyed creating portmanteau words - a single word with two meanings.  The word derives from the English term  "portmanteau luggage" - a piece of luggage with two compartments. An example of a portmanteau from Finnegans Wake is "kissmiss" : both an alternative spelling for "Christmas" and something that may occur under the mistletoe.

Try to come up with some portmanteaus of your own.

#003 - Family members

Pick members of your family and write a description of them using their age as your wordcount (e.g., Nan, 71, Dad, 48, your niece, Lucy, 5). Could you think of a single word to describe your one-year-old baby nephew? Mix up the descriptions so that your paragraph has varying sentence lengths. Mixing up short and long sentences helps to structure prose and varies the pace.

AUGUST 2025

August 2025 prompts

In honor of Ozzie Osbourne’s passing. I felt compelled to create a prompt that is inspired by your favorite music.

1. Pull up your favorite play list, mix tape, mp3 player, ipod, cassette tape or just turn on the radio in your car and pick your favorite song title, lyric or inspirational tune. Write a short piece in any point of view and style based on that song. As an example from Ozzie: “Crazy Train” could be a story about a sentient train that uses AI to take over the world. OR it could be a tale about some insane asylum inmates who escape and take over a transcontinental railroad. Your music and your choice.


2. Maybe you are not inspired by music - in that case, pick your favorite tv show and choose a secondary character. Make that character the main protagonist in your story. For example: in Seinfeld - Kramer is a secondary character - what kind of tale could he tell?


3. Finally, think of your favorite musician or composer from any era. IF they were a fictional character, based on their music, what story would you tell starring them?

Enjoy!