Category: Steering the Craft
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The Old Woman
Prompt: Write two versions of the same story, narrating back and forth between a ‘now’ scene and a ‘then’ scene. Version A should be in first person or third person, version B should be in the other. Version A should be all in present tense, all in past tense, or ‘now’ in present tense with…
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Chastity Exercise
No adjectives, adverbs, nor dialogue. Only verbs, nouns, pronouns, and articles. A child sits at her desk, peace enveloping her. She thinks this: the joy and comfort she’d feel snugging into an envelope then traveling the world swaying in a postman’s bag… Before her lies a stack a books: a personal journal, a story journal,…
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Repetition
At the end of all things there existed the Last: a group of beings all on their own, floating in the remnants of Space, but beings, sentient, nonetheless. What exactly they were is unknown: tales are told of these great Wanderers, alone among the Stars, but tales, myths, nonetheless. Time collides – the Last were,…
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Sentence Length & Complex Sintax
From Ursula K. Le Guin’s Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew 1. Write a narrative paragraph of 100-150 words in sentences of seven or fewer words. In the beginning, he slept. In fact, all he did was sleep. All he could do was sleep. But…
The AM Intrigue 