I’m a little disappointed with myself on this freewrite. It was fun, don’t get me wrong! In the interest of time I missed the chance be more creative in my approach to a certain type of magical object. I have to remind myself that this exercise is supposed to get the creative juices flowing, and it’s not a system to produce perfect ideas on the first try. I’d love to see how others interpret these prompts, so please comment or link back to your own site so that I can see!

Character: Librarian

Object: Rug

Genre: Speculative Fiction

Continue reading “Friday Freewriting – Megan – May 7, 2021”

Another Friday, another freewrite. As I mentioned last week, my goal was to be serious this week in my attempt; I avoided humor, at least. I did not do a great job at capturing the “Romance” genre, per se. I could also see the argument that the main character is not a father, though he was offered the chance. Let me know what you think, and I’d love to read what you write if you try this prompt!

Character: Father

Object: Ottoman

Genre/Tone: Romance

Continue reading “Friday Freewriting – Megan – April 30, 2021”

Doing this every week is revealing, to say the least. The first thing it’s teaching me is how shallow my understanding of various genres really is. My writing is more of a parody of a stereotype of romance—to take this week’s exercise as an example—than it is actually evoking the genre.

Brown Leather Chair and Ottoman $1395
Photo by Paris on Ponce & Le Maison Rouge

On the other hand, it’s proving that I actually can bring a story to completion under time pressure, if I’m given enough structure. I have not once had an idea of how any of these stories would end. But I’m able to find an ending in the roughly twenty minutes of actual writing. They’re kinda clichéd and lame (today, I had two endings, and I decided on this one; I’ll put the alternate ending in the comments), but they’re endings that wrap up the story. That’s honestly more than I thought I could do on a regular basis.

As always, we’d love to see your take on these prompts in the comments. Or just poke fun at our attempts!

Character: Father

Object: Ottoman

Genre/Tone: Romance

Continue reading “Friday Freewriting – Robert – April 30, 2021”

It’s been a while since our last post. We’ve been working on a writing project which has kept us pretty focused on our own little world. But we’re poking our heads up again, and looking forward to connecting with others!

One way we’re doing that is by writing an original story (each of us) every week, just to get in the habit of telling stories. These aren’t really serious stories, really just writing exercises – but they’re exercises that create a complete story with a beginning, a middle, and an ending.

There are lots of ways to do this, but for the moment we’re using what we’re calling the Mary Robinette Method.

Continue reading “Back to Basics”