Vivid writing engages all the senses. But a writer doesn’t slather cobalt blue and Prussian blue and titanium white onto the page to paint the sky as it darkens before a rain. She can’t reach for her trumpet and belt a B-flat to herald the end of an act. He rarely has the opportunity to slide a sliver of dark chocolate laced with habanero chile between his readers’ lips. And when was the last time a book reached out with a feather and tickled that spot at the base of your neck? Writers use words to awaken and engage a reader’s …
Tag: writing prompts
The Wild Freedom of 100 Lines
My writing friend in Mexico introduced me months ago to author CM Mayo’s generous web offering: 365 five-minute writing exercises. Somewhere among those exercises is one that suggests writing 100 lines about a story, scene, idea. I don’t remember the exact details of her exercise, but I am completely addicted to the flexibility it has inspired, and I use it all the time. These days, when I’m diving into a new scene, I begin with 100 lines of free association. These free me of fear and lead me to infinite discoveries, including: dialogue, emotionally evocative sensory details, physical descriptions, various …
FLASH FICTION, FLASH MEMOIR!
Writers of full-length narrative may easily be enticed by the extreme brevity of flash fiction. A story with a word-count of 250 to 1000 words forces its creator to dive right into the thick of things. And what a joy to complete a story in minutes instead of months. Now, writers of memoir can join in the dash. Recently, the magazine More encouraged its readers to write and post a six-word memoir. Their example: Revenge is living well, without you. —Joyce Carol Oates, from Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure. To read other six word memoirs and …