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Apr. 6th, 2003 11:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icarusA challenge for all of you! Pick one of the following:
- Take a simple event: A man steps off the Knight Bus, looks around in embarrassment, and sees a woman smiling. Describe this event using the same characters and elements of setting, in five completely different ways (changes of style, tone, sentence structure, voice, psychic distance). Make sure the styles are radically different; otherwise the exercise is wasted. [2]
- Write three effective long sentences, each one at least 250 words, each one involving a different emotion (for example, anger, pensiveness, sorrow, joy). Purpose: control of tone in a complex sentence. [3]
- Write a monologue of at least three pages, in which the interruptions-pauses, gestures, description, etc.-all clearly and persuasively characterize, and the shifts from monologue to gesture and touches of setting (as when the character touches some object or glances out the window) all feel rhythmically right. Purpose: to learn ways of letting a character make a long speech that doesn’t seem boring or artificial. [7]
- Write a two-page (or longer) character sketch using objects, landscape, weather, etc. to intensify the reader’s sense of what the character is like. Use no similes (she was like…). Purpose: to create convincing character using more than intellect, engaging both the conscious and unconscious mind. [9]
- Describe a character in a brief passage (one or two pages) using mostly long vowels and soft consonants (o as in “moan”, e as in “see”, l, m, ,n, sh, etc.); then describe the same character using mostly short vowels and hard consonants (i as in “sit”; k, t, p, gg, etc.) [17]
~ courtesy of John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction
Swiped from CLS' website.
- Take a simple event: A man steps off the Knight Bus, looks around in embarrassment, and sees a woman smiling. Describe this event using the same characters and elements of setting, in five completely different ways (changes of style, tone, sentence structure, voice, psychic distance). Make sure the styles are radically different; otherwise the exercise is wasted. [2]
- Write three effective long sentences, each one at least 250 words, each one involving a different emotion (for example, anger, pensiveness, sorrow, joy). Purpose: control of tone in a complex sentence. [3]
- Write a monologue of at least three pages, in which the interruptions-pauses, gestures, description, etc.-all clearly and persuasively characterize, and the shifts from monologue to gesture and touches of setting (as when the character touches some object or glances out the window) all feel rhythmically right. Purpose: to learn ways of letting a character make a long speech that doesn’t seem boring or artificial. [7]
- Write a two-page (or longer) character sketch using objects, landscape, weather, etc. to intensify the reader’s sense of what the character is like. Use no similes (she was like…). Purpose: to create convincing character using more than intellect, engaging both the conscious and unconscious mind. [9]
- Describe a character in a brief passage (one or two pages) using mostly long vowels and soft consonants (o as in “moan”, e as in “see”, l, m, ,n, sh, etc.); then describe the same character using mostly short vowels and hard consonants (i as in “sit”; k, t, p, gg, etc.) [17]
~ courtesy of John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction
Swiped from CLS' website.
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Date: 2003-04-06 01:44 pm (UTC)Hooray, originals!
Date: 2003-04-06 02:30 pm (UTC)~Icarus