The Notebooking Daily Fall Writing Series is a daily writing exercises for both prose writers and poets to keep your creative mind stretched and ready to go—fresh for your other writing endeavors. The writing prompts take the impetus—that initial crystal of creation—out of your hands (for the most part) and changes your writing creation into creative problem solving. Instead of being preoccupied with the question "What do I write" you are instead pondering "How do I make this work?" And in the process you are producing new writing.
These exercises are not meant to be a standard writing session. They are meant to be productive and to keep your brain thinking about using language to solve simple or complex problems. The worst thing you can do is sit there inactive. It's like taking a 5 minute breather in the middle of a spin class—the point is to push, to produce something, however imperfect. If you don't overthink them, you will be able to complete all of the exercises in under 30 minutes.
#21
Micro 101 Episode 04 Hungry Hungry
Micro 101 Episode 04 Hungry Hungry
For today's writing exercise you will write a few micro-poems or micro-fictions. These will be either poems under 12 lines or stories under 100 words.
Don't worry about them not containing a complex message. Aim for a surface level with one metaphoric level. Focus on interesting juxtapositions, something out of place and why—either why it is in that place, why it's out of place or why it actually fits in for some unexpected reason. Real Estate is expensive in a micro so avoid too many phrasal verbs and using too many articles when possible. But also don't expect a micro to explain the world in 100 words.
Here is a good short guide about crafting plot in micro fictions from Mythcreants, which sounds to me like how Mike Tyson would describe the characters in Suicide Squad.
For inspiration go read some micro or hint fiction in this Buzzfeed article, at Microfiction Monday, 32 Poems and Nanoism.
Micro Exercise 1: Make a list six foods that would be considered salty, and describe their color and texture (overlap in texture is ok). Pick your three favorites and use them when you write a micro where the narrator desires something salty, but is pointedly using that desire to ignore a much larger issue which they should be addressing.
Micro Exercise 2: Pick the food from #1 which you know the most about preparing/making. Write a micro where someone is making that food and they are interrupted by an unexpected visitor. Perhaps write a 'How-to' that describes the interrupted preparation as though it were how the dish is always prepared.
Micro Exercise 3: Write a micro which uses one of the two unused foods from #1 and write a micro dialog with no more than 2 tags, and 2 action beats aside from the dialog, no narration.
Micro Exercise 4: Write down 4-7 interesting phrases/titles from this Random Title Generator, use it as many as ten times if you need to. Use one of those as the title and include a second in the micro. Try to include 2-4 additional snippets for extra fun.
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If you'd like some background music to write to, try the Moody Blues' album "Long Distance Voyager".
