Thursday 18 July 2019

A picture is worth...


You are holidaying. You are always creative. Autumn’s looming and a new start to the teaching year. So collect postcards! You don’t have to travel far – find fascinating postcards at galleries and museums. How to use them?  There are many possibilities. But first, variations in distribution.

EXERCISE METHODS: IMPERATIVE -- Distribute the postcards and instruct students to (bubble and) write the exercise. CHOSEN -- Lay out a generous selection and let students choose a card that calls to them. AMBUSH -- Part way through a given writing exercise go round and drop a postcard at each student’s place – they now have to swerve to incorporate something from this picture. 

EXERCISE: POSTCARDS OF PLACES. Travel postcards of streets, landscapes, buildings, foreign scenes; atmospheric photos; also postcards of paintings of land, sea or interiors.  Someone has just walked through/been in this place, who is it? Where was he/she coming from, going to?  Why?  What’s on his or her mind?

EXERCISE: SURREAL POSTCARDS. Strange abstracts; angled photos of weird items; mysterious, surreal, bizarre, funky or otherwise odd paintings or photos.  States of Heart – this picture represents someone’s feelings and thoughts, write an interior monologue.

EXERCISE: SITUATION PICTURES. People doing things, the more puzzling or busy the better. What’s going on in this picture?  Who are these people, why and what are they doing?  OR Choose one person in the picture and write his or her thoughts, feelings, dialogue.

EXERCISE: PORTRAITS. Painted or photographed. Describe this person’s life.

EXERCISE: MYTHICAL PICTURES. Fairytales, myths, legends, Bible tales, saints, heroes. Write one scene of the story, as vividly as you can.  OR Write a scene of this story that is unknown to the rest of the world.  OR Write the thoughts and feelings of a person in this story.

EXERCISE: SEASON AND ELEMENT PICTURES. Nature; close focus on rocks, water etc. Put a character in this place/experience, why is he/she there, what thoughts, feelings and senses? OR Explain this to a child who has never seen it.

EXERCISE: ANIMAL PICTURES. Especially wild animals in the outdoors. You are a photographer or a scientist observing this animal, but at the same time it is reminding you of somebody else; write the train of thoughts.

EXERCISE: WRITING WITH THE SENSES. The 8 Senses exercise (see Mini-Lecture 2) works well with any of the above postcards and pictures.  Describe the smells, sounds, textures, movements in this picture.

8 categories and 3 methods, multiply that! This post is just a snippet from Creative Writing: the Matrix paperback and :the Quick Matrix ebook. ‘A lifesaver for creative writing tutors’ – Amazon uk & .com Click here to see more.

Thursday 10 January 2019

Ways to open a story

January opens the new year... how about exploring ways to open stories? Of course an opening is only relevant to the story that follows, and every piece your students have written so far has an opening. Still, once you have stimulated some story ideas you can have students practice openings with this bossy exercise I call Imperative Opening. But first, a list:

Some Ways to Open a Story

  • Dialogue
  • Setting -- geography or weather
  • Setting -- interior
  • Monologue, first person
  • Character description, third person
  • Characters in action
Imperative Opening Exercise 
Prepare the above list as a handout. Give students a stimulus (ideas below) or get them to have a story in mind, then give them the handout -- which is also a taskslip. Go round and tick one opening on each person's list -- a different one for each student. (Repeat the cycle for however many students you have.)


Instructions: With your story in mind, write an opening in the mode I've ticked, about half a page long. Remember to bubble first (my word for jot or list ideas) to help you expand and gather your thoughts.

After reading out and discussing the effects of the different openings you can extend the exercise by doing a new round of ticks. Like an absolute monarch you are imperatively forcing students to stretch themselves into devising a different manner of opening with the same story in mind. Or you can generously let them choose their own option from the list. When they moan, say: Yes, you must stick with the same story, the better to explore the effect! Further reading out and discussion follow of course.

Imperative Opening is in Section 3 VI, Craft: Storytelling Devices. It's Exercise 70 in Creative Writing: the Matrix paperback. It's Exercise 65 in Creative Writing: the Quick Matrix ebook.

Story stimulus exercises Above I promised you some starters if your students haven't yet got a few stories in mind. There are loads in the Craft section of the Matrix books -- Character's Journey, Opening with an Ending, Rainbow Tale, Agony Letter, Character Profile. See Exercises in the Labels list of this blog. There's always the trusty Postcard method: give each student an interesting picture postcard for story stimulus.

'It was a dark and stormy night...'? Maybe not. I wish you a bright and sunny season of teaching creative writing.