A WRITING EXERCISE – for you! 4 responses
ONE WEEK LEFT! Have a go! Don’t be shy! Use all or part!
ARE YOU A WRITER? I am offering you the opportunity to develop your skills for FREE with an occasional series of writing exercises. I will help you with style, content, and general tips for improvement!
WHY am I doing this? I need breaks from writing my current novel! And I’d love the opportunity to help new writers!
HERE’S the FIRST exercise:
This is the plot that came to me at 3am last night. It’s not fantastically original, but then almost anything you think of in terms of plot, someone has thought of before. But as Gary Snyder says in his excellent book on screenwriting, “Save the Cat” if you can’t do it different, just do it better.
Can you do it better?
Genre: Science Fiction/ Fantasy/Horror
Blo opens his eyes. He sees a cheerful face of Ronnie before him. Ronnie urges Blo to follow him. With difficulty he follows, asking questions and receiving answers.
We begin to realise that Blo has just died.
They meet Grey. He explains that Ronnie is taking him (Bro) for “repair”. If he were taking Bro, it would have been for “disposal” Those who are “repaired” are reborn. Those disposed of are, well…
Here we get intimations that Heaven and Hell are simply misunderstandings.
The Reveal: mankind destroyed itself through Climate Change a hundred thousand years ago, but not before they had developed sophisticated AI and organic robots, which were programmed to continue to produce robots in the image of the former humans. And so the cycle continues.
You will need to explain the absence of artefacts and remains – eg what was not destroyed by hurricanes and other disasters was scoured off the Earth by the robots, on the instructions of “the Programmers”, maybe god.
Task: how can you do this without a huge amount of boring exposition? Can you convey all this interestingly in a Short Story? Novel? Film?
Use any or all aspects of the plot above. Change names if you wish. Use the ideas to set off YOUR ideas.
Try it as a Short Story. Send it to me and I’ll publish the five best ones on my website – with your names of course! I’m not a copyright thief. I will send a free critique to the writers of the best ten.
Email your story to me jonelkon3@gmail.com with the subject COURSE
Deadline: YOU HAVE 3 WEEKS
Interesting… Not going to be easy:)
Feel free to play with details. Don’t stick 100% to the outline! If you feel creative, let the outline be just a stating point.
I have nearly recovered from not having won the competition so still sulking. So what is the prize? Is this another competition?
Hi Grigor – no, not this time (another one coming up soon) just a chance for new authors to take a basic idea and turn it into a well-structured, interesting Short Story. I will comment, and others can too when I post the story onto my blog.