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Two Exercises for Teaching Description and Using The Five Senses in Writing
One of the biggest losses I’m feeling from completing the semester at home is the inability to execute my favorite “Five Senses” activity in the classroom with my writing students. It’s one of my favorite days in the classroom, where I play music and ask students to sit and write based on prompts pertaining to their five senses. THE FIRST EXERCISE The exercise requires students to reach into a brown paper bag that I bring into the room and “touch” something that I’ve placed inside it. In the past, I’ve put pinecones, Silly Putty, or sand in it. After they touch it, they have to write what comes to mind…
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Podcast & Prompt | #nanowrimo | Day 8
Steph’s Scribe Podcast 5 | Best Books For Writers My apologies in advance. I never realized how often I say the word fabulous until I listened to this PODCAST back. I’ll work on that… But seriously, all these books are F A B U L O U S, which is why I am recommending them to writers. WRITING PROMPT For Fiction Write a scene in dialogue only. Do not use any other description or narrative techniques. Just write dialogue. For Non-fiction Write the dialogue of a conversation you overheard and tried to piece together. Do your best to stay true to the actual words that were spoken by your characters.
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I Can’t Make Him Love Me, A Short-Short
When I was taking courses for my MFA, I had to write weekly exercises that went up for critique. I came across this one that I hadn’t shared. It’s a really short one. We had to “get in and get out” quickly so readers could “feel and understand the situation” in under 400 words. Here’s how it went. . . I Can’t Make Him Love Me There, by the lake, she was watching the two figures, bobbing in the water, clothes strewn on the shore where the sand meets the grass, nude, hair soaking wet, arms grasped tightly around each other, lost in each other’s eyes and lips. Her heart…
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Half Smiles: A Piece of Short Fiction for Friday
Short fiction for this gloomy Friday… Half Smiles Mona kissed her husband and three-year-old daughter Marla goodbye that gloomy Monday morning as the rain christened her new Honda Accord. She was usually a morning person, excited to put her two feet on the carpet every morning as she got out of bed. Today, however, her hands were shaking and her heart was pounding. She couldn’t touch her breakfast. “Don’t you want your toast?” her husband asked her as she buttoned her raincoat and took one last look at herself in the hallway mirror. She studied her face and thought that something looked unfamiliar. “I can’t eat a thing,” she said,…
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Fiction Friday: A Knight, A Princess, and a Dragon make up The Village of Happinyss
When my son was little, I used to tell him stories that revolved around a character I made up called Myron the Knight. I have the original story written down and perhaps, in the future, may do something with it. Nevertheless, for this week’s Fiction Friday, I left behind my usual tragic romantic or happy romantic writing and used this character of Myron in a different type of piece. The challenge from Brian Kiteley’s book was to do the following: “…for the first part, tinge the world in dark hues and show us a narrative style that reflects frustration, sadness, and alienation.” Then later, we were to switch and “use…
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Fiction Friday: Three Perspectives
From the Brian Kiteley book, The 3 A.M. Ephiphany, (a great text that offers exercises to keep writers fresh), I attempted to write the same story in two voices and then use a detached narrator. This exercise was a little tricky to stick to the story, but yet offer two takes on it. Detached narrator is more difficult once you get inside your characters’ thoughts and emotions. Two Voices First Voice: I sit tapping my fingers at the bar waiting for her to arrive. My Cosmo’s half gone, and I’m about to order a second. She’s late, as usual. She had called me from her car to say she was…
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In Honor of the Royal Wedding
Today, a post went around on Facebook that said the following: In honor of the Royal Wedding on Friday, use your royal name. Start with either Lord or Lady. Your first name is one of your grandparents’ names. Your surname is the name of your first pet, double-barreled with the name of the street on which you grew up. Post yours here. Then cut/paste into your status. Four of my Facebook friends and I did it, and I couldn’t help but chuckle at the names. They were as follows: Lord Clarence Henry of Devonshire (Scott) Lady Helen Lizzie of Old York (Currie) Lady Catherine Rebecca of Howard (Christin) Lady Gwendolyn…
