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.