Cambridge Writers’ Group: Exercises

  www.plumeandink.com/writers.htm     

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Thursday March 2, 2006

 

Take 15 – 20 minutes to complete one of these excercises.[1] 

 

1.  Write a scene using fear that you have felt.  You may give the fear to a character, or write in first person, autobiographically.  Make the details so clear, so concrete; your reader will feel the same fear. 

 

2.  Begin by writing down a bit of a ritual or an old song that you know by heart.  Then intersperse those lines with paragraphs – anything that comes to mind, allowing lines from the remembered piece to act as a refrain throughout the piece.

 

3.  Imagine someone in shadow.  Keep your attention on the shadowed figure.  She clearly what can be seen.  Begin writing with any words that come to you.  If you feel blocked, go back to the shadowed figure.

 

Writers' Group



[1] Questions are excerpted from Writing Alone and With Others by Pat Schneider.  Oxford University Press: New York, 2004, they can be found on pages 147, 326 and 357.