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.