This is one of my favorite of Mr. Novakovich’s exercises, and one that captures the essence of what I like about his writing style. I’m going to quote a paragraph from the text here, so that you can see what … Continue reading →
The purpose of this exercise is to write a strong emotion that we’ve experienced. The idea is that in doing so we will tap into intensity, and therefore verbosity – a good path to Story. It was interesting: I found … Continue reading →
Now, instead of creating story from the bible, we look at history. We take an event and a relatively unimportant person, and make them play a pivotal role. It gets us thinking about the stories that happen in everyday life, … Continue reading →
I loved this one. The assignment is to look at a bible story and make variations, finish incomplete stories, etc. It comes from Midrashim, which is “the Hebrew tradition of interpreting biblical stories through filling in the gaps.” (Novakovich, Ch. … Continue reading →
I have been featuring prompts from Josip Novakovich’s excellent book, Fiction Writer’s Workshop. I highly recommend it, if you are interested in the craft of writing. He demystifies the process of writing, from where to get story ideas all the … Continue reading →
This is, according to Mr. Novakovich, a fairly easy prompt for his students to write. I didn’t find it so, actually. The prompt is to write about a fight. I did not, in hindsight, pick another person’s fight – I … Continue reading →
Dreams. The stuff of dreams. Dreamlike state. All of these conjure up images, but for each of us, those images are different. Your dreams and my dreams are very different creatures. All, though, are rich sources of material. The first … Continue reading →
Memory is a tricky thing. We ‘remember’ events, but our mind can change those recollections so that they have no bearing on fact. Eye-witness testimony, for example, is notoriously unreliable. Three people can witness the same event and have three … Continue reading →
Another one from Mr. Novakovich. I like this one, because it’s like painting a picture with words. More like a sketchpad, really; but it helps me to focus my attention on details around me and to realize there are stories … Continue reading →
Mai Madness! For those of you who have followed my blog, you know I participated in the March FADness competition last year (Flash-A-Day). The challenge was to writea a story a day, from between 500 and 1,000 words. I had … Continue reading →