Tuesday, April 19th 500 words min

500 word minimum

Radical Revision
Select a piece of writing from your journal, blog or finished piece – something that you are not afraid to rework, something you are not committed to.

You are going to take risks with this piece. Take the piece as far as you can.

Pick one of the following:

Voice/Tone Change

double voice, multiple voice, change from first to third or to second. write as a character. Change tone from serious to comic or vice versa. Change ethnicity. change perspective. use stream-of-consciousness.

Genre change

non-fiction to poem to song to ad campaign, fable, letter, sermon, fairy tale, recipe, prayer, cartoon,

Audience Change
adult to child to business to educated to immigrant

Time Change
future, flashbacks, continuous present, parallel times, simultaneity, tell backwards, different era or point of time,

Thursday,april 14

[ Reminder: meet in the forum for Cultural Fair speaker. ]

Record as accurately as possible a two-three minute conversation among two or more people.

For Thursday, April 7th

500 words min.

The essence of drama is conflict—forces of one sort or another at odds in one way or another. In this exercise I want you to focus on the notion that the essence of conflict is power. Power as in….

Someone has authority over someone else
Someone challenges the authority of someone else
An institution or a group of people control an individual’s behavior
An individual controls the behavior of a group of people or an institution
Someone wants something from someone else
Someone uses the threat of physical force to manipulate someone else
Someone uses information or money to try to control someone else

Using one of the above—or something similar—explore the notion of power as leading to conflict. Perhaps put the characters from your short story into a situation where there is a power differential. See what comes up.