My writing group is working its way through Steering the Craft, we just started. I am going to share my exercises here for additional feedback, should you choose to leave any, that is.
Exercise One: Being Gorgeous
Write a paragraph to a page (150-300 words) of narrative that’s meant to be read aloud. Use onomatopoeia, alliteration, repetition, rhythmic effects, made-up words or names, dialect –any kind of sound-effect you like –but NOT rhyme or meter.
Here is my completed exercise:
BOOM! Goes the dynamite. Explosions are the best. Light and sound and crackling pops of color, sending debris flying in every which direction. Up and down and inside of things…Like buildings, and people and colors become just one: red. And sounds become just one: screams. And crackling pops burst ear drums, and Boom! topples buildings built over centuries. Maybe, explosions are not the best. But colors and sounds and light illuminate countries, and simple acts like running through fields of daises; pretty pops of yellow and white filled with butterflies and the backdrop of blue skies are threats of: BOOM! Wrong step, buried beneath daisies, dynamite, goes BOOM. Choose a different route to school, where colors are gray and buildings, already toppled, are more safe, because the threat of BOOM is buried beneath their rubble.
I find it interesting where our minds can take us. I started writing with the first sentence that popped into my head, which was the line “BOOM! Goes the dynamite,” a funny phrase popularized in this YouTube video:
I initially thought I was going to write a funny piece, and I ended up somewhere totally different…such is the process I suppose.