This Week's Practice Exercise

Dialog Tells The Story (v.2)

Prepared by: Alex Quisenberry
Reposted on: June 16, 2013

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Exercise: In a two-person dialog of no more than 400 words show us as much as you can about the characters' personalities and their situation. Stick to their own words.  Use as little exposition/description as possible.

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Listen to people talking. How are their words strung together? Are the speakers aiming for meaning or for effect?  Do they speak formally, in complete sentences and well-thought-out paragraphs, or do they use verbal shortcuts? From their conversation, what can you tell about their moods, their ages, backgrounds, emotional states, their relationships, their personalities, their "stories"?

Well-written dialog puts us with the characters and tells us a lot about them and their situation.

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Exercise: In a two-person dialog of no more than 400 words show us as much as you can about the characters' personalities and their situation.  Stick to their own words.  Use as little exposition/description as possible.

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In your critique you should aim to tell the author whether you get a clear picture of the two characters through the dialog and explain why. Are the two voices distinct?  What do these characters tell us about themselves and their relationship through their conversation?  Are they believable? Are they interesting?  Can we tell where they are and why they are there?  If it is important to the piece, can we tell the sex and age of these people?  What did you like best about the author's use of dialog?  Do you see room for improvement?




These exercises were written by IWW members and administrators to provide structured practice opportunities for its members. You are welcome to use them for practice as well. Please mention that you found them at the Internet Writing Workshop.

This Week's Practice Exercise

The Allowance

Prepared by: Alice Folkart
Posted on: July 8, 2012

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Exercise: In 400 words or less write a piece that centers on an allowance.

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When we think of 'allowance,' we immediately think of money given to a child on a regular basis.  Sometimes the child is required to meet certain requirements to get this allowance. What might they be?  Are they reasonable?  Is the allowance enough in relation to the child's needs?  Is it princely or miserly?  Then, there are other kinds of allowances--businessmen get travel allowances from their companies (do they cheat? are the allowances so skimpy that the businessman has to sleep in his rental car?), wives (and sometimes husbands) get housekeeping allowances from their spouses, mistresses get upkeep and spending money from  their lovers, elected officials get allowances for all sorts of things. What do the recipients of allowances do with the money?
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Exercise: In 400 words or less write a piece that centers on an allowance.

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Critique the author's imaginative use of the idea of an "allowance." Does he/she use it to create a compelling character or to throw light upon an interesting social situation?  What do you like about the story? What might make it better.  Would you read on if the author were to continue this narrative?


These exercises were written by IWW members and administrators to provide structured practice opportunities for its members. You are welcome to use them for practice as well. Please mention that you found them at the Internet Writing Workshop.

This week's writing exercise~

 Fire! (version 2)

Prepared by: Carter Jefferson

Reposted, revised, on: February 27, 2011 

Exercise: In 400 words or less, create the first scene of a story, novel, or creative non-fiction essay. Let fire play a significant part in that opening, and show its effect on the characters. 

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Fire can keep us warm or force us out into the cold. It can light a birthday candle or ignite a fuse, illuminate the pages of a book or destroy a library. Like an unruly servant, it can be enormously helpful or bring on disaster. It's been so important through the ages that it used to be considered one of the four elements of which the entire cosmos consists. 

Great fires like the ones in London in 1666 and Chicago in 1871 have influenced history. The Triangle Shirtwaist fire in New York in 1911, which killed 146 people, 129 of them women, led to major changes in workplace regulations and, especially, conditions for female workers. Authors as different as Shirley Hazzard, Patricia Cornwell, and Nora Roberts have used fire, metaphoric or real, as backdrops for best-selling novels.

In this exercise, you must light a fire, or discover one, and show how it affects your characters.  Your scene will be an opening; make sure it will leave readers anxious to know what happens next in your creation. 

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In your critiques, consider whether the writer has used fire effectively in the scene. Can you see how it affects the characters? Does the writer show, or tell? Would you read further to see how the story develops? Consider all aspects of the writing.

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These exercises were written by IWW members and administrators to provide structured practice opportunities for its members. You are welcome to use them for practice as well. Please mention that you found them at the Internet Writers Workshop (http://www.internetwritingworkshop.org/).

 

This Week's Practice Exercise

Patchwork
Prepared by: Alice Folkart
Posted on: Sunday, June 27, 2010

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Write a scene in 400 words or less that incorporates one item from each of four categories supplied with this exercise. Often, a good tale begins with a collection of story elements that seemingly have no relationship to one another. This is your opportunity to select a few, mix hem together, and show your readers the scene that emerges.

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Setting: A Park, a Zoo, a bedroom, a mountain trail, the interior of an airplane, a jail cell

Character: A teenager, male or female; a 70-year-old woman; a Buddhist priest; a coal miner; a celebrity, a Boy Scout Leader

Historical Period: The present; the future; sometime in the 19th Century (or any Century you find interesting); the year you were born

Situation: A robbery; a plague; a political rally; a rock concert; an execution; a revelation.

What kind of story could you make of a scene in which it is the year 2056--a Rock concert is in progress a few blocks away, and a Buddhist priest is waiting for someone at the entrance to a zoo?

Or, a 70-year old woman sits in a jail cell. It is 1898, and she is waiting to be executed.

Or, tt is the present day. The 70-year-old woman enters a bedroom and discovers that she's been robbed.

There are many possible permutations with these different bits of data. See how you can work some of these pieces into an interesting scene.
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Write a scene in 400 words or less that incorporates one item from each of four categories supplied with this exercise. Often, a good tale begins with a collection of story elements that seemingly have no relationship to one another. This is your opportunity to select a few, mix them together, and show your readers the scene that emerges.

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In your critique consider how creatively the author has used the bits of data to build a framework on which to hang a story. And then discuss how the author has or has not fleshed out the character and situation. Comment on any special characteristics of the story. Does it feel factual or fantastic? What makes it feel that way? Would you want to read more? Why or why not?

These exercises were written by IWW members and administrators to provide structured practice opportunities for its members. You are welcome to use them for practice as well. Please mention that you found them at the Internet Writing Workshop.

This Week's Practice Exercise~

Filling out a story~

Prepared by: Prepared by: Alice Folkart
Reposted revised on: Sunday, 15 March 2009

Exercise: In less than 500 words, write a dialogue twice: first just the words, as if overheard, and then with description/action added as if you're watching the two people talking.
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This is a two-part exercise, but with a total word count of 500 words. First write a two-person dialogue of 100 words or so, and then write the same dialog as a full-blown scene of approximately 400 words incorporating description/action.

The bare-bones dialogue should be something one might overhear when unable to see the speakers. This part of the exercise should be quite short, 100 to 150 words. Then, revise, adding description and/or action. The word count of the "revised" dialogue should bring the total word count of the two parts up to no more than 500 words.

Your submission will consist of the two parts together, and should total no more than 500 words.
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These exercises were written by IWW members and administrators to provide structured practice opportunities for its members. You are welcome to use them for practice as well. Please mention that you found them at the Internet Writers Workshop

This week's practice exercise~

Something completely different~

Prepared by:Charles Hightower
Reposted on: Sunday, 14 December 2008

Exercise: Alter one word of a common phrase so that the topic takes on new meaning. Modify, transpose, add to, or remove no more than three letters of one of the words. Then use this as the title for your piece of 400 words or less.

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What happens when you take a common phrase and make a slight tweak to one of its words? You may end up with a completely different topic.

Consider the warm, cuddly tale of "Santa's Workshop," a place where you might want to press your face against the window to peer inside and watch elves at work. Changed to Satan'sWorkshop, you might be more likely to flee for your life. A "Worthy Opponent" might be a very different character from a "Wordy Opponent." The tale of "Robbery Gone Bad" would seem a different story from "Robbery Gone Fad." Use one of these examples or be creative and come up with your own.

Be sure to show the original phrase followed by your altered title.

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These exercises were written by IWW members and administrators to provide structured practice opportunities for its members. You are welcome to use them for practice as well. Please mention that you found them at the Internet Writers Workshop.

This weeks Practice exercise~

The other side of the story~

Prepared by: Florence Cardinal
Reposted on: Sunday, 9 November 2008

Exercise: In 400 words or less, rewrite a scene from a story familiar to most of us from the point of view of someone other than the main character. Tell us the name of the story you have chosen and who your viewpoint character is, and then show us what is different about the way that character sees the action and personalities involved.

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Every character in a story, from the main character right down to the dog, has a reason for being included, a reason for his or her actions, a point of view. Yes, some characters are just part of the machinery of the plot--the butler announcing the arrival of the Duke. But once that butler gets back to his pantry and starts gossiping with the housekeeper, he becomes part of the story, and we get a different perspective on what's going on in the house. The way all of the characters interact, the way each one views the action, deepens and enlivens the story. In the best stories, the characters, good and bad, act for clear reasons, their interactions providing the conflict and narrative tension that makes for a good read.

Some examples:

How might Rhett Butler or Melanie Wilkes see Scarlet O'Hara in Gone with the Wind?

See Stephen King's Cujo, where we watch the thoughts of a dog as he goes mad.

What would the wolf have to say about Little Red Riding Hood?

Some writers have already rewritten a known work from another point of view. Tom Stoppard, in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, showed us Hamlet through the eyes of two minor characters.
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These exercises were written by IWW members and administrators to provide structured practice opportunities for its members. You are welcome to use them for practice as well. Please mention that you found them at the Internet Writers Workshop.