DAY EIGHTEEN

1. DAY EIGHTEEN Feraco Creative Writing 9 July 2010

2. Inspired by the Details • Using ONLY a description of a person’s hands, describe the following personalities, conditions, or character traits. • You may have the hands doing something, holding something, or just describe their appearance. You will want to give as much detail as possible. • Use the following sentence to launch your description (more than one sentence): • “I settled into my seat on the plane and looked around. Between the seats in the row in front of me I could see a woman’s hand on the armrest. I could tell she was __________ because…” • rich • dying • nervous • artistic • intelligent • athletic • beautiful • dumb

3. Inspired by the Details • Like the “boring word” exercise we did with poetry, the same thing applies to descriptions in short stories, particularly when applied to character development. • Use the basic structure of the following sentence and alter its diction to create the following characteristics • “The man picked up his car keys and walked out the front door.” • mean • nice • suspicious • crazy • conceited • immature • excited • paranoid • enraged • satisfied

4. Favorite Characters! • Choose a favorite character from a movie, book or TV. • Why do you like them so much? What about him/her makes them a great character? • Look at the list of characteristics we made a couple of weeks ago, and do a character sketch using the list we came up with • For example: Holden Caulfield – 16 years old – White/Caucasian – New Yorker – aspires to be the Innocence Keeper of the world, etc.

5. The World Comes to Life • Setting can be broken up into three main categories: location, time, and environment. • Location refers to any place the story occurs in. • It can be super-detailed (like the “writing room” exercise”) or a specific address, or it can be very general (like “the universe”). • Brainstorm a list of all aspects of location. • What about time? • Brainstorm a list of time elements. • Time can be clock time, day or night, century, date, month, day of the week, etc. • Environment can be like location, except it is more general • For example, weather or “a forest” would be environment • You need one in order to establish the other

6. The World Comes to Life • When creating a setting, you have four options about what to write. • Some place you definitely know • Some place you kind of know • Some place you could guess about • Some place you don’t know • First write about a place you definitely know, concentrating on details and description • (Your bedroom, bathroom, or a place you spend most of your time in)

7. The World Comes to Life • Next, write about some place you kind of know • This can be a friend’s house, a Starbucks, a city you have been to on vacation, etc. • You should know enough to write knowledgably but you will have to make up the little details.. • Then, write about some place you can guess about. • This could include a tribal hut in Africa, a deserted island, a cave in the mountains, an Italian village, a medieval castle, etc. • You may have never been to this place but you know enough to guess and fill in details.

8. The World Comes to Life • Finally, write about some place you don’t know. • This may also be a place no one knows. • All fictional places fall into this category such as Oz or Narnia. • Also included would be planets in space, the bottom of the ocean, inside a volcano, or other places that no one really knows about. • Obviously, you will need to create details for these places.