IWW
Practice-W Exercise Archives
Exercise:
Fire! (Version 2)
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/).
Exercise: Fire! (Version 2)
Prepared by: Carter Jefferson
Posted on: April 8, 2007
Reposted on: July 6, 2008
Reposted on: December 6, 2009
Reposted, revised, on: February 27, 2011
Reposted on: May 27, 2012
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Exercise: In 400 words or less, create the first scene of a story,
novel, or creative
non-fiction essay. Let fire play a significant part in that opening,
and show its effect
on the characters.
-------------------------
Fire can keep us warm or force us out into the cold. It can light a
birthday candle or
ignite a fuse, illuminate the pages of a book or destroy a library.
Like an unruly
servant, it can be enormously helpful or bring on disaster. It's been
so important
through the ages that it used to be considered one of the four elements
of which the
entire cosmos consists.
Great fires like the ones in London in 1666 and Chicago in 1871
have
influenced history. The Triangle Shirtwaist fire in New York in 1911, which killed 146 people, 129 of them women, led to major changes in workplace regulations and, especially, conditions for female workers. Authors as different as Shirley Hazzard, Patricia Cornwell, and Nora Roberts have used fire, metaphoric or real, as backdrops for
best-selling novels. In this exercise, you must light a fire, or discover one, and
show how it affects
your characters.
Your scene will be an opening; make sure it will leave readers anxious
to know what
happens next in your creation.
-------------------------
Exercise: In 400 words or less, create the first scene of a story,
novel, or creative
non-fiction essay. Let fire play a significant part in that opening,
and show its effect
on the characters.
-------------------------
In your critiques, consider whether the writer has used fire
effectively in the scene.
Can you see how it affects the characters? Does the writer show, or
tell? Would you
read further to see how the story develops? Consider all aspects of the
writing.
Web site created by
Rh�al Nadeau and
the administrators of the Internet Writing Workshop.
Modified by Greg Gunther.
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