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Tag: starter
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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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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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8 Titles You Can THINK SOMETHING DIFFERENT For. . .
In the July / August 2013 Report on Business, Eric Reguly has an article titled “STORAGE WARS,” but it’s not about the TV show where people buy abandoned storage lockers in the hopes of finding treasure. It’s actually aboput Big Oil’s reserves and what would happen to them if we stopped “burning the stuff…
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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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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…
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Knockout Idea: Taiye Selasi on the importance of photography to writing
Taiye Selasi, author of Ghana Must Go, says, “I spend a great deal of time documenting…I’m always taking pictures. Somehow, these little snapshots of the world inform my work…. An elderly couple walking, rain on windows, light on anything, anywhere–these quiet details of everyday life are the stuff of human experience.” Try this: …