Saturday, March 30, 2013

an interesting homework

in the writers' group i attend we had a fun homework.

we were given a list of seven, really serious writing mistakes.
we had to write a short story (more of a flash fiction) and we had to commit all the seven mistakes at least once.
as soon as i found out the plot i began writing and began seeing the characters behaviour and interaction.
it was a shorty short piece and i kept it under 250 words.
at first i wrote the 'good version' and then the 'bad'.
:)
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limiting word count is an extremely useful tool. it shaves off all the unnecessary words and the useless ones, too.
i can't thank Jason enough for introducing me to this technique.
i use it even when i write articles for the agricultural monthly paper.
:)
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and Vesper, this little exercise was uplifting. i liked writing it, liked the polishing and kind of like a naughty child, liked committing the mistakes. hee :)

5 comments:

Vesper said...

This is a great exercise!
You see, I told you you should just start writing. :-) I only wish you would sometimes write in English too so that you could share it here.

I miss Jason a lot. You're right, we've learned so much from him. Writing those 250 words stories was fantastic!

SzélsőFa said...

ugh, starting this excercise was really hard.
you see, i didn't want to write just for the sake of writing. something you read and instantly forget. i wanted to create a feeling, a plot the reader can relate to.
(whether i succeeded or not is a completely different question).

and it was really difficult to find a good one, with that little voice in my head telling me that all was awful.

but once i found _the_ one i was immersed in the scene, as you so nicely put it on my other blog.

SzélsőFa said...

as for writing in English:
i do not use English as much in my everyday life as i used to. proof-reading translation jobs are rare, i do not have English consumers to communicate with, and i frequent less English-language blogs these times.
but, see -
what if i translated these 250 words and plublished them on my blog?

which one would you like to see?
the presumably good one, or the one where, for the sake of the exercise, i added those mistakes deliberately?

Charles Gramlich said...

This kind of thing can be a lot of fun. I do something like this for my writing students as well.

SzélsőFa said...

and do you evaluate the results, Charles? I mean, do you sit over a deliberately wrong piece and try to pick the mistakes?