Writing exercise: doorway into adventure!

Here in the Journey, we have a history of doing simple writing exercises and prompts in our jabber chats. Katherine L. stopped by for a while to offer her help with editing; she mentioned her daughter Sabrina’s blogs from Cuba (very nice). After she left, Ajey and I decided to try a writing prompt. I came up with: write about an individual who steps through a doorway or portal into adventure. Take just 15 minutes (no editing).

Here’s Ajey’s partial entry:

Why had there been a warning sign for this part of the island? There wasn’t anything here but dense jungle foliage. It was really intense, thought Isabella, but then she looked around and let out a gasp. Some of the large bush in front of her had collapsed after the heavy, monsoon-like rains that had just passed over the island, and just behind that bush, and now visible, was a large polished marble rock. She had seen this kind of rock before, in the lobby of her newspaper building. It was not the sort of thing you would expect to find on an island.
Parting her way through the dense underbrush, Isabella slowly made her way over to the rock. She brushed some dirt off it. But the thing that most intriqued her was that the rock felt loose. She took both hands and started rocking the rock. It would only rotate in one direction, almost as if a lever had been positioned below it and somehow attached to it.
Well, “Here goes!” Isabella thought as she pulled on the rock with all her strength and then let it drop. Machinery was engaged, and the rock, with all deliberateness slid downwards, forcing her to jump up and out of the way. Now the rock, which had been a vertical eliptical shape, was laying horizontal on the ground.
“Okay, this is interesting” Isabella thought. But moving the rock didn’t seem to do anything. Its movement did not reveal a hole in the ground, or anything like that.
Momentarily unsure of herself because of what she had just done, Isabella edged back toward the road. She made sure that the sign warning trespassers away was now in front of her again. Was this just a trick to establish the fact of the islanders’ compliance, and to trick the insufficiently-compliant into revealing themselves? Would there be secret agents pulling up in Jeeps momentarily? Isabella shuddered.
Again taking stock of her surroundings, Isabella now noticed, almost outside the field of her vision, …

Here’s mine:

Sheryl stumbled into the dark, dusty room, struggling not to breathe deeply after her dead run through the hallways of this strange mansion. The light of several dim moons filtered through layers of grime and cobwebs that obscured the tall, narrow windows in the room. Ears straining to listen for signs of immediate pursuit, she fumbled with the heavy open door and wrestled it closed. The creaking hinges complained, rising to a horrible loud screech as the door closed.
Or almost closed.
Sheryl cursed to herself to see that some mismatch between the old door and the swollen wood of its frame kept the door from closing all of the way. Well, there was no helping it.
She tried to shut away the outside world, the terrors that had chased her, the dust in the room that tickled her nose in the stale air of this room. She reached out with her mindsense. Searching… searching… Yes, there it was, quite nearby now.
The Presence was bright enough in her mind that she walked forward with confidence despite her closed eyes, stepping neatly around the dark table to stand before a shelf. And there, at the level of her heart, it was: the Presence. She opened her eyes as she reached out and lifted the large, heavy book from the shelf. It seemed to emanate a strange glow her mind wanted to see behind her eyes.
She carefully placed the book on the table, her fingers tracing the delicate carvings in the old leather binding. Opening it, every blink of her eyes revealed to her the page she wanted, the page that called to her.
With the book opened before her, a faint breeze ruffled her long, dark hair. The air from the book smelled fresh. Almost she tasted the tang of the ocean upon the breeze. Almost it made the dark dustiness of the room around her fade into the background.
The door’s hinge creaked and the light from a torch cast her shadow upon the book.
Now fear made her heart rise within her. Almost she turned to face her pursuer; but her years of training steadied her will. There was no escape, no hope of survival in confronting the pursuer. There was only a moment to act.
“Sheryl! For God’s sake, don’t!” he called behind her.
She closed her eyes and stepped forward into the pages of the Book.

What do you think? I’m thinking perhaps this might be an interesting story to submit to our upcoming horror anthology.

Feel free to comment with your story/scene-let entries.

Tim is a founding member of the Journey, co-Municipal Liaison for the Naperville region of National Novel Writing Month, and the author of several short stories.

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Workshop on Revising Your First Draft.

The Path to Publication   –   From First Draft to Self-Published Novel

The Writing Journey Workshop on Revision

Ready to create the second draft of your 2013 NaNo novel? Already started or still working on 2012? Mark your calendar. At the next Writing Journey meeting (Saturday February 8, from 11:30 AM-3 PM in the Lunch Room, Naperville Municipal Center, 400 S. Eagle Street, Naperville; as with other Journey meetings, bring your own lunch) Roger Lubeck is conducting a Workshop on Revising Your First Draft.

Going from first draft to a finished, publishable, novel takes a series of steps. It is a process of writing, revision, and editing. This workshop will examine the process of revising a first draft. Through presentation and hands-on activities, the workshop will explore character, scene, and dialogue development and revisions, using a story wall for plot adjustments, and the ARRR process of revision: Add, remove, replace, and rearrange.

In the workshop, participants will revise aspects of one of their unfinished novels. To facilitate these activities each attendee is asked to bring a copy of his/her novel, or copies of pages taken from his/her most recent (first) draft for the following workshop assignments:

Assignments:

  1.  Character. Bring a copy of the description of the main character (Protagonist) taken directly from the most recent draft (text only no bullet points). This should include the first time the character is described in the novel and page number. You can include later descriptions (pages) if they help. You can print the page and highlight text if you like.
  2. Location. Bring a copy of the description of a location or scene that is important to the story. The description is to be taken directly from the most recent draft (text only no bullet points). This should include the first time the location or scene is described in the novel. You can print the page and highlight if you like.
  3. Dialogue. Bring a sample of dialogue between the Main Character and another Main or Secondary character. The sample should be half a page or more with what you consider either your best scene of dialogue or a conversation that needs work.

 

Roger’s fiction writing began as a participant in NANOWRIMO in 2004. Since 2004, he has completed nine 50,000 word manuscripts in nine years.

Roger is the author of three self -published novels. To the Western Border: A Fantasy Adventure, (Book One in The Council of Magic) in 2011, Bullseye: A Novel of Murder and Suspense in 2011, and Captiva in 2013.  As a member of  The Writing Journey, Roger edited and published an Anthology of short stories by the The Journey entitled: The Day Before the End of the World (2012).

Roger is a behavioral Psychologist with 20 years of university teaching followed by 20+ years as a business consultant. In his career, Roger has been a business consultant, workshop leader, retreat facilitator, public speaker, speechwriter, assistant professor, researcher, parent trainer, and dogcatcher. Roger is married to Lynette Chandler, a University Professor and author. Roger and Chris Hanson are the authors of Finding the Right Path: A Guide to Leading and Managing A Title Insurance Company (2011).

 

The Three-Legged Stool of Creativity

(edited)

Daily Writing
Part One of a three-part series on helping creativity flow

Leg_1
Leg One – Daily Writing

The way to be any kind of writer is to write, and to write regularly. Just ask Stephen King, who writes about 2000 words a day, sun or rain, winter or summer. I think he might have missed a few days when he was hit by a minivan, but otherwise, he writes.

This blog is what you call a case in point. I started it largely because I need the practice, and vowing to post at least twice a week up gives me regular deadlines to meet outside of November (aka National Novel Writing Month).

Actually, though, I’ve been writing daily since shortly after my first NaNoWriMo. I write at least 750 words a day, thanks to the web site called, funnily enough, 750words.com.The guy who started it, Buster Benson, read a book called The Artist’s Way.

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From Julia Cameron’s website

In case you’re unfamiliar with the book, the author, Julia Cameron, recommends that anyone who is having any sort of trouble with their creativity should make a practice of rolling out of bed (or not; you could just as easily do this in bed) and making a three page journal entry first thing in the morning. You needed to write, as fast as you could, making no judgment at all about what you were writing.

There’s something stress-relieving about writing pretty much any old crap that spills out of your mind. I tried this practice myself, back somewhere around 1995 or so. What I found was that once I was done writing those 3 pages, I was done writing for the rest of the day. Maybe that’s because it takes so long to write by hand and my penmanship is so gruesome that I could never make any sense of it later. I quit doing it for quite a while, but a few years back I heard about 750 Words which was started as a way to do your morning pages online, and it changed my life.

Okay, it changed my habits, but that’s a first step, right? Since September of 2011, I’ve written 842,346 words on the site. I never thought I’d keep up the habit, but the site lets you earn badges for writing streaks of varying lengths, as well as other behaviors like writing quickly or making a donation to the site.

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My Latest Badge

I’m a sucker for swag, even the virtual variety. I have my eye on the Space Bird badge, which you earn for a 500-day streak. I should have it already, but I missed posting one day a year or so back. It was during NaNoWriMo, so I actually wrote that day; I just forgot to paste the words into the 750 words site so I could get credit for them. I had to start over again from the beginning. Boy, did I feel like a doofus!

750 Words also provides a lot of interesting metrics about what you’ve written; that’s how I know about the 842,346 words I’ve written there so far.

I’m sure there are other ways to help yourself get into the habit of the writing. One of my writing friends is trying the “Don’t Break the Chain” method, and other swear by HabitRPG. I haven’t tried either site, but they sound useful and/or fun. I never underestimate the power of fun little rewards, even if they’re as silly as badges, just to keep me going.

The point is: I write daily. I recommend it to anyone who’s trying to be both creative and productive.

Catherine published a novel and short story back in the 1990s. Life intervened, and she didn’t write for a while. But then she started writing again in 2010 for National Novel Writing Month, and has continued to write in November and throughout the year. She has stories in two Journey anthologies, Drops of Midnight and Other Worlds. She is currently either revising her latest NaNoWriMo novel from 2012, working on short fiction, or posting on her blog, CB’s Mojo.

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