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Category: starters
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A Starter for You from the January, 1921 National Geographic
One of my favorite writing exercises is to take a piece of writing I like, clip a piece of it, and try to continue writing in that author’s style. I also love making something nonfiction into fiction. The selection I’ll ask you to try this with today comes from “The Dream Ship,” a January,…
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Bullying, adult style… writing idea!
Bullying is bad enough when it happens on a playground, but when it involves ADULTS, it can get downright nasty. Take a look at this piece of Nicholas Schmidle’s article, “Bring Up the Bodies”: According to an internal I.C.T.Y. document from 2004, Limaj’s relatives and associates launched a campaign of ‘serious intimidation of and…
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A real-life Indiana Jones? Long starter from nonfiction…
Talk about adventure! Here’s the beginning of a NONFICTION article, “The El Dorado Machine,” by Douglas Preston: The rainforests of Mosquitia, which span more than thirty-two thousand square miles of Honduras and Nicaragua, are among the densest and most inhospitable in the world. “It’s mountainous,” Chas Begley, an archaeologist and expert on Honduras, told me…
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Starter from Margaret Talbot
Today’s line to get you started comes from Margaret Talbot’s “Shots in the Dark,” in the April 15th, 2013 edition of The New Yorker : What’s the worst that could happen? Try this: Who’s thinking this and why? Once you decide that, go write the scene. Coming tomorrow: A fighting 8 count that…
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Starter…from an ad for a tv show!
Today’s prompt comes from an ad for the show Maron, and it shows a tweet that’s kinda, sorta, not really sweet: I found this article describing the 6 stages of a romantic relationship. I went thru all of them in one weekend. Her name was Jen. Try this: Now, it doesn’t matter if her…
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Starter . . . from an advertisement!
Today, I’m going to give you an opening line. Then, if you really want to know where it came from, follow the dots down the page. It may give you an ADDITIONAL idea to write about! The line is… She’s first. * * * * * * * * * * * These…
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Sara Dailey Week #001: Starter from a title
Welcome to Sara Dailey week! Over the next seven days, we’ll be learning technique and getting ideas from a single article of hers, “The Memory Train,” that was published in Creative Nonfiction magazine, the one edited by Lee Gutkind. First up is taking a look at that title: “The Memory Train.” Other people’s…
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Knockout Idea: Photo captions
Here’s a knockout idea I got while reading Ariel Levy’s story, “Living Room Leopards.” At the very beginning of the story, there was a photo of a cross-bred cat: a mix between a wildcat and a domestic cat. The caption read: Half-bred crossbreeds are in vogue but controversial, and illegal in some states. …
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Speed bag drill #002: Mysterious deaths
So speed bags work this way: Once you finish reading the prompt, you start moving your pen on paper or you flash those fingers across your keyboard, and you keep going for at least five minutes. Today’s speed drill comes from “Findings,” in the June 2013 edition of Harper’s: Experts were unable to explain the…
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Starter: A mystery with two solutions
Today we’ll begin with a paragraph starter–the opening to Rebecca Solnit’s nonfiction article, “The Separating Sickness.” First, read the excerpt: Eddie Bacon was a forklift operator at Trident Seafoods in Akutan, Alaska. In the summer of 1999, he developed mysterious rashes on his hands, arms, and legs. He visited a doctor, who gave him a…