Writing Exercise 7: Draft a Short Story
This is part of my writing exercises workbook, available to subscribers.
This is a longer exercise, depending on your writing style. However, it is not intended that you try to write a full, polished, ready to publish tale in a single setting. It’s about getting your creative juices flowing and bringing in several of the other exercises for a complete narrative.
Begin with “It was a dark and stormy night…” or one of the other opening lines provided below and write a short story. Focus on creating a vivid character or two, interesting locations with details that will engage the reader, and a strong sense of plot and conflict to move the story along.
Opening Lines1. Once upon a time…2. It was a dark and stormy night…
3. In a galaxy far, far away…
4. Long ago in a land called…
5. It was a hot summer day…
6. On the edge of town…
7. As she stepped off the bus…
8. Once upon a starry night…
9. Far beyond the reaches of space and time…
10. In the heart of the city…
11. Deep within the woods…
12. At the stroke of midnight…
13. In the quiet stillness of the morning…
14. Beneath the shadows of an ancient oak tree…
15. High above the clouds…
16. On the eve of war…
17. Amidst the bustle of a busy marketplace…
18. At the beginning of winter…
19. Underneath the glow of a full moon…
20. As dawn broke over the horizon…
Since this is a longer exercise, give yourself time to complete it. Once complete, review your narrative relative to the other exercises. Is your conflict clear for the reader? Are there interesting and compelling character traits described? Are those traits relevant to the story? Do important objects or settings come to life in the tale? Can you clearly identify the climax of the plot? If you aren’t certain of the answers to these questions, your reader won’t be either, so it may be worth revisiting the exercises and performing them again.
Feel free to post on your own blog and link back here so other readers can learn from your own experience.
Good luck, and have fun writing.
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