Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Fiction: First Line & Fiction Exercises

Today we will conduct a fiction exercise. Follow the steps below for your exercise:

1. Create a character name.
No ideas? Use your middle name and combine it with the last name of your neighbor, a distant relative, or your mother's maiden name.

2. Describe your character's personality in a few sentences. What kind of person is this character? Focus only on the spiritual, mental, or emotional traits of your character--do NOT focus on physical characteristics.

3. Considering the character's personality, describe your character's physical characteristics or traits. Make sure you give your character at least one physical flaw. No one's perfect.

4. Describe your character's social or family life.

5. Give your character a long-term goal or desire.

6. Now that your character is shaping up, create 3 premises or situations that your character can find herself in. Your premise should be a very short (1-3 sentence) summary of a potential story. You may change genre or tone. Do not necessarily write three connected scenarios. Each scenario or premise should work on its own.

7. Combining the first sentence exercise with this one, choose or alter your character and first line to start a story.

8. Write a first draft. For the rest of class, please write a 1st draft of a short story (1-5 pages).

NOTE: Hand in Hemingway homework (see post from Monday).

Homework: Please read the article on Character.

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About this course!

This course stresses understanding the characteristics & techniques in the literary genres of fiction, poetry, and dramatic writing. This course will continue to build on students’ reading and writing skills begun in previous creative writing classes. Readings and discussions of works by major writers in the field will be examined as inspiration and models of fine writing. This educational blog is designed for the use of the students at the School of the Arts in Rochester, NY.