The purpose of this assignment is to use setting to establish the opening and closing of a story. Setting can lead to Story, frame it, and sometimes be the purpose of it. By doing these exercises (this one and the … Continue reading →
The object of this exercise is to understand how to use nature settings effectively. We are to describe the setting of a man-against-nature story, using as much detail as possible. “Mount Shasta” Mount Shasta is not dormant. It’s one of … Continue reading →
Describe a train ride. The idea is to show travel, but I found it incredibly hard to do – the funny thing is, I ride a train to work every day. So I assumed it would be easy to write … Continue reading →
I haven’t fallen off the wagon, exactly; it’s more that the homework train collided with the posting train and there’s words all over the tracks! I’ll post shortly; just have to get caught up on the homework reading. Hang in … Continue reading →
This has an interesting approach. Rather than just write a story, we write a list of all the items we can remember from our household home. We don’t order the list, just write it without censoring. Then, read the list, … Continue reading →
The object here is to write down what you dream for a few mornings in a row, then pick one to expand on. The key is, tell the story as though it were plausible, don’t let the reader know it’s … Continue reading →
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 →