Making Your Way Into a Story

Choose a story line of a film, book, game, etc. and get into it in one of the three ways:

- change the plot from some moment on;

- introduce a new character (it can be you);

- make characters from different story lines cross their paths.

The Second Round of the Year-long Practice

Dear students and other people keen on / prone to creative writing, welcome back to the practice.

I hope summer has brought you something special alongside some usual things (that can also be perceived special), like long evening talks, lots of light, icecream, swimming, playing all sorts of games, sleeping till midday and not having to make your bed, reading, savouring food, travelling.

If you want to start small, just make a list of things you're grateful for having come your way this passing season.

The reader-writer-life relationship.

Choose the prompt - or let it choose you - and get a plunge or a flight. In any case, enjoy :).

1. Take your potential reader on a literary journey (in the form of an essay) through your favourite books. 

2. Write an article in which you'll trace the story of book as a form. Will it give way to its electronic equivalent(s)?

3. If you were to write a book, what would it be about? Consider the possible setting, characters and storyline.

4. Tell me about your lifelong bond with a writer or a character. 

5. Alter a story of a book of your choice.

After You've Read any Given Story...

If you want to stay with the story, or give it some more of your time and attention, here are some options to consider:

1. Retell the story - or write it - in your own style.

2. Tell the story from another character's point of view. 

3. Finish the story - in other words, become a writer :).

Change-Maker

Read the prose poem "The Jaguar and the Mango" by Jose Fernandez Diaz:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/151748/the-jaguar-and-the-mango

Then make some changes in it, big or small. See how the changes - from slight to enormous - affect the story.

Gathering and Mixing

Take it in turns in a classroom, or in a group of friends and tell each other what's going on, or what's caught your attention recently. Then try to include as many threads/details in one piece of writing.

It Is Like This, and Like This, and Like This... or: It's Not Like This But Rather Like That

Listen to the podcast or just to the poem shared at the beginning of it: https://onbeing.org/programs/victoria-adukwei-bulley-not-quiet-as-in-quiet-but/

Then choose something - it could be absolutely anything - and explore its nuances in a form of a poem. If you'd rather go for a piece of prose, go for a piece of prose.

For example, if you have chosen Sadness as your exploration field, you can write something like this:

Sadness

It's like when nobody remembered

your birthday, or no one cheered 

you up to go for it, whatever it 

stood for you.

It's like someone says something mean, 

and means it, even if they have

apologised.

It is like autumn leaves - falling,

falling.

Like falling out of love.

Like love gone.

Like a single glove

shining black

on the white

of snow.