EXERCISE: Ending Lines...

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

original posting: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 22:09:58 -0400

Simple, but perhaps someone would like to run a short series for the list.

At one point (a while back), someone took those short stories in Readers' Digest and posted the last line from them.  The challenge was to write a story with that climactic line.  Of course, sometimes in writing the story, the climactic line got displaced, but it was an interesting way to get the fingers writing.

So, for example, we might take that line from Morley that I keep quoting (actually, Eudora does a nice job of remembering it for me).

Write a story whose final line is:

Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it.

Let the grey cells pontificate (we're papal now?) upon what kind of scene, conflict, and characters might represent this little aphorism.  What parable of modern day (or whatever day you prefer) life would make this sentence sink in and tingle?

Go ahead and write!

(twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble... :-)

Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it.  Christopher Morley

And some of us tapdance a bit as we do it!  tink

EXERCISE: Point of Revelation

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

original posting: Tue, 02 Jul 2002 23:13:15 -0400

You've probably seen the advertisement -- a middle-aged man and woman are enjoying each other's presence, with yogurt playing a prominent part in their byplay, when the kids walk in.  "Mom!  Dad!"  or perhaps "My parents are so weird."

So, here's the plot.

Pick a time of revelation.  For example, realizing that our parents are sexually interested in each other.  Or that father doesn't always know best. Or that grandma is dead.  Or...

Now, put a scene around that, and some characters.

It's often the case that there is a first indication of the revelation (seeing parents entwined in the kitchen, perhaps), but the real impact comes later.

You could use the three-fold path suggested by "Difficult Conversations."  First, what really happened.  Second, how do I (the characters) feel about that.  Third, and most crucial, what does this say about who I am (the identity of the characters).

I like to think about how we realize something, and that changes us, and changes the way that we interact with others.  But it's up to you.

Write.  Tell us about a time when your characters learned that... and what did it mean to them?

(wow!  ministers can lie? What do you mean, Santa Claus is too drunk to sit with the kids?  aargh -- old people have sex too?  :-)

EXERCISE: Spinning Gold Out Of Hay?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

original posting: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 22:32:37 -0400

(Sigh.  Looking for gold here, and there, and ne'er seeing those rainbows springing up from the mists, with the gold out there...so let's put up a pointer, frame the unseen, and otherwise look ahead to what may be!)

Okay!  Let's take a wild swing, and say that the golden era of WRITERS is yet to come.

You, my fine hearties, are going to swing that pick, tote that bail, and build the wonderful, magical wizard of o...oops, that's another story, best told in technicolor (with the horse of a different color prancing the way!)

So, let's assume (for sometimes we must place our thoughts ahead of our aspirations, else we expire?  Go ahead, breathe)...

1.  What would mark the golden era of writers for you?  What would be happening, what would the postings resemble, tell us a few of the subject lines and themes being traded on that day?

2.  What are you going to do to make that happen?  What mix of postings are you sending on that fine sunshiny morning?  What responses do you make when someone trips over your clay feet?  How do you act (or perhaps hold the reaction?) as you trip along those golden cobblestones, up to the tower of writing?

Go ahead.  Dream the future for us, show us what lies ahead in that era of goodwill and fine workshoppery, and then spin us a path to tread that gets us there.

(and his name was Rumpelstiltskin!  And he sneezed when he saw the hay?)