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IWW
Practice-W Exercise Archives
Exercise: Where Are We?
These exercises were written
by IWW members
and administrators to provide structured practice opportunities for its
members.
You are welcome to use them for practice as well. Please mention that
you found
them at the Internet Writers Workshop
(http://www.internetwritingworkshop.org/).
Prepared by: Carter Jefferson
Posted on Sunday, June 24, 2007
Posted on Sunday, June 28, 2009
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Exercise: In 400 words or less, write a portion of a story or memoir
that clearly
portrays the setting and its importance to the events that will follow.
Your
characters should show us the surroundings in which they act.
__________________
Settings influence stories; sometimes they are almost as important as
the
characters. Readers may not think they pay attention to the details of
the location of
the drama, but they are influenced by the stage on which events unfold.
They expect
characters to behave differently in different settings. In a church
people may be
solemn, at a football game noisy, in a country club formal and
polite.
Some writers start their stories by simply describing the setting, but
in this exercise
let the actors show us the stage and the props in such a way that
readers will know
where they are fairly early in the story.
Just setting the story in a barn won't do. Details are important. Is it
light or dark?
Mice rustling around? Horses in their stalls? Hay in racks above? Or is
it
completely deserted, with cobwebs in the corners and old tools rusting
on the
ground? How does it smell? Is it dry or damp? Barns differ, and so do
the stories
they house.
Here's a sample from Raold Dahl's story, "Man From the South":
"It was getting on toward six o’clock so I thought I’d buy myself a
beer and
go out and sit in a deck chair by the swimming pool and have a little
evening sun.
"I went to the bar and got the beer and carried it outside and wandered
down
the garden toward the pool.
"It was a fine garden with lawns and beds of azaleas and tall coconut
palms,
and the wind was blowing strongly through the tops of the palm trees
making the
leaves hiss and crackle as though they were on fire. I could see
the clusters of
big brown nuts hanging down underneath the leaves.
"There were plenty of deck chairs around the swimming pool . . . ."
This could be done in third person as well: "he thought he'd buy
himself a beer . . . ."
__________________
Exercise: In 400 words or less, write a portion of a story or memoir
that clearly
portrays the setting and its importance to the events that will follow.
Your
characters should show us the surroundings in which they act.
_______________
In your critique, tell the writer whether you can visualize the
setting. Does it hint at
what might be coming? What role does the setting play in the story?
What other
details could have been added to improve the submission? And, as
always, critique
the writing.
Web site created by
Rhéal Nadeau and
the administrators of the Internet Writing Workshop.
Modified by Greg Gunther.
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