Tuesday, March 25, 2008

I'm sorry, a thousand apologies.

Wow, I started a new semester and all all thoughts about my blog were forgotten. I was updating a separate blog of mine today, when I thought I'd check on this one. 5 comments! Thank you to everyone who responded to last week's 6 word story posts. Three people sent me their stories.

Ramesh wrote:
"He tripped and fell into Heaven".

Bill Tessore wrote:
"Build people, people will build you."

Sophia wrote:
"Everything since Bach is a lie."


I love your stories! They were really great and I hope to see you all submit more stuff soon. Ramesh's story achieved exactly what I was aiming for. It spoke volumes with a sentence. Bill's story was quote-like which is another way to do them. It tells a moral rather than a story. I enjoyed Sophie's story too. It made me giggle. Keep writing, you'll find your niche soon!


This week I thought that since I was gone so long, I'd give you all a special treat. A cool website I found is unphotographable.com. I happened upon this site which gave me a great idea. This photographer can't always photograph everything he sees and so, instead of simply forgetting what he was about to photograph, he writes down a description of the scene.

One example is this one he posted on 11/14/07:
"This is a picture I did not take of a Muslim man, pushed to the limit by an evangelizing Christian, who swaggered in front of the Muslim, mocking Islam and calling the man schoolyard names, nor is this a photograph of the punch the Muslim man landed on the Christian man's ear, a punch thrown from behind, thrown hard enough to make the Christian man's eyes tear-up and start pleading that he wasn't disrespecting, and as the two of them fought their own small religious war on a street corner in Atlanta, three people stood quietly watching, looking-on from the safety of their slouches, they were waiting-for-the-bus before the fight and would be waiting-for-the-bus after so why make a fuss -- and two of the watchers weren't watching the fight really, but were looking down at the ground, at the fate of a box of chicken, that was suddenly, precariously, between the Christian and the Muslim, but had actually been there all along, quietly marking the spot where two men would have their own religious war, above a box of forgotten fried chicken."

This writer does something fantastic-- he makes you see the scene without the picture. his story really says something and I think yours can too.

This will be the first larger writing exercise. What I want you to do is this: create a scene which tells a story from an external person's point of view. You are the observer. Observe. What is the person doing? Where are they? What's going on around them? The object is to create a picture with words. You want the reader to SEE what you see. When you can do that with words, your writing will improve before your eyes. A reader must be engrossed.

I encourage you to go through and read some more of his fantastic pieces. It's really worth it. Michael David Murphy does a tremendous job.

I'm once again very very sorry for my lapse in posting. Lots of new classes and new worries. I'll try to be better about it, really.

Feel free to comment with your writing pieces and I'll put them in the next post!

So until the next time I blog, keep writing!

(Oh, and I turn 16 in 5 days!)

2 comments:

Karis said...

Holy cow - 16?? That's IT?? I'm so impressed. :) I will try and get something written to submit... we'll see how it goes. Fun prompt...

Sydney said...

I look forward to reading it! I'm sure it will be great.