IIIGatherings & Reading
Prompts and practice
Writing Tips & Learning Library
Small exercises for days when the page is blank and the kettle is suddenly very interesting.
Information
Ten prompts to start with
- Describe a room you can no longer enter.
- Write the conversation two people have while carrying a heavy object up stairs.
- A letter that arrives forty years late.
- The festa, from the point of view of someone who has to clean up afterwards.
- An instruction manual for something that cannot be taught.
- Begin with the last line of a story, then write what came before.
- A poem in which every line is a question.
- The sea, without using the word ‘blue’.
- Something your grandmother said that you only understood later.
- Two characters who want the same chair.
Habits that help
- Write at the same time of day, even for ten minutes.
- Stop mid-sentence, so tomorrow begins easily.
- Read your work aloud before you call it finished.
- Keep a ‘cuttings’ file for lines you remove — you will rarely use it, but it makes cutting easier.
A short glossary
- Point of view — whose eyes and mind the reader travels through.
- Enjambment — when a line of poetry runs on into the next without a pause.
- Scene — a moment shown in real time, usually with action or dialogue.
- Summary — time compressed and told, rather than shown.
- Voice — the distinctive texture of a writer's or narrator's language.