Friday, February 15, 2008

Thursday Night's Writing Exercise

Tricia asked me to share the writing exercise I used, so here it is:

I took it from the kickstart section of the SCBWI site (Kickstart #9):

There are ten opening sentences. Everybody picked one at random and wrote the rest of the opening paragraph (or in some cases two or three paragraphs). In case you're interested what I had to build from -- I had #3.

3. As Samantha gazed across the dance floor at Jason, her heart sank.

Wasn't exactly the genre I normally write, but that's probably a good thing for the exercise.

To continue the theme, everbody is to bring an exceptional opening paragraph from a published book.

All in all, I think the whole thing worked.

My favorite opening that someone selected was:
4. The hamster had lived in Mrs. Bottom's 3rd Grade Classroom for a year now and
only one person had heard him speak.


Happy Writing and thanks to the SCBWI site for last night's kickstart.

Jim D

6 comments:

PJ Hoover said...

What! I want to see what you wrote!!!

Jim Danielson said...

I write this with the disclaimer that this was a writing exercise. This is uneditted. There was a time limit. Etc, etc,etc......

Having said that:

As Samantha gazed across the dance floor at Jason, her heart sank. It wasn't because of the zit in the middle of his forehead -- who didn't have one some time or another. Besides, as cute as his dimples were, who needed to look at his forehead anyway? The problem was the unsightly growth on his arm. The problem was Amanda Sunkin.


Satisfied???

PJ Hoover said...

Yes! It's really good AND funny :)

Jim Danielson said...

Thanks PJ!

Vivian Mahoney said...

Hey, Jim. That's a good paragraph. I want to read more!

Jim Danielson said...

More? There isn't more.

I'm not sure if I could stay inside Samantha's head long enough to write an entire novel. Think I'll stick with finishing the 2 under revision and 2 others that are started. :-)

Jim