April 2004 Workshop: McSweeney's 20 Minute Stories

[Numenor]

Blu, we did a writing excercise in my English Language AS class the other day, Your given three sentences. One is the first sentence of your story, the second is the last, and the third is a sentence that must be included but at a point of your chosing. It sounds like just an extended variation of a 'Turn this sentence into a story' but knowing the last line tends to warp our inspiration and ideas slightly, and more often than not I find myself getting to that last line with a most haphazard plot.

For comical results, pick lines out of films.

Numenor

[Handarazuur]

I tried this one today. It's pretty interesting, actually.

Basically, you have fifteen minutes to write a piece of fiction. The interesting bit; your monitor is switched off as you type. It's pretty interesting to see what you come up with after that time, believe you me.

[Rodimus]

How about this. Take an event that affected alot of people (Spanish train attack, 911, firebombing of Higaraa) and have everyone write a vignette about somebody affected by it (directly, indirectly, by anything that else that happens because of the event). The event can be completely fictional (to avoid any "real" politics though it could be an allegory), of course, and the thread starter can take it as an exercise/challenge to write up the details about it.

[blackjack]

We could (I know this was tried before but didn't get a ton of responses) do a workshop which focuses on dialogue. Essentially, one would write a dialogue-driven piece, like a play or screenplay almost only in prose form with very limited narrative description. I notice that very few of these pieces contain much dialogue at all - perhaps writing realistic dialogue more fluidly would be a good goal for May's workshop.

[LoCo]

Has anyone messaged bluevorlon with these ideas? Or are they just being posted here?

[Bnonn]

Bump. What's going on?

[Handarazuur]

That's one hell of a bump.

I was thinking something like a fifty-word story.

[ionfish]

Discuss new workshop ideas in the Studio, please. I've changed the permissions of this forum to disallow posting.