Fiction Assignments

Use any of the following assignments to write a story. For every 500 words you generate, that is worth 1 point. For an assignment to qualify for "pointhood," it must be at least 500 words.

Story Form and Structure

1. Write a scene placing two characters in this very fundamental conflict: One wants something that the other does not want to give. The something may be anything-money, respect, jewelry, sex, information, a match-but be sure to focus on the one desire.

2. Write a scene in which a character changes from: angry to ashamed attracted to disgusted exhausted to enthusiastic determined to uncertain

3. Place a character in conflict with some aspect of nature. The character need not be fighting for survival; the danger may be as small as a mosquito. But balance the forces equally so that the reader is not sure who will "win" until the crisis action happens.

Showing and Telling

4. Write about a boring situation. Convince us that the situation is boring and that your characters are bored or boring or both. Fascinate us. Or make us laugh. Use no generalizations, no judgments, and no verbs in the passive voice.

5. Write about a character who starts at a standstill, works up to a great speed, and comes to a halt again. The rush may be purely emotional, or it may represent the speed of the vehicle of pursuit, of sport, or whatever you choose. The halt may be abrupt or gradual. In any case, let the prose rhythm reflect the changes.

Characterization Part 1

6. Below is a list of familiar types, each of them comic or unsympathetic to the degree that they have become clichés. Write a short character sketch of one or two of them, but individualizing the character through particular details that will make us sympathetize and/or identify with him or her. · an absent-mided professor · a lazy laborer · an aging film star · a domineering wife · her timid husband · a tyrannical boss · a staggering drunk

7. In the sociological science of garbology, human habits are assessed by studying what people throw away. Write a character sketch by describing the contents of a wastebasket or garbage can.

8. Pick two contrasting or contradictory qualities of your own personality (consistent inconsistencies). Create a character that embodies each, and set them in conflict with each other. Since you are not writing about yourself but aiming at heightening and dramatizing these qualities, make each character radically different from yourself in at least one fundamental aspect of type: age, race, gender, nationality, or class.

Characterization, Part 2

9. Write a scene in which a character speaks politely or enthusiastically but whose thoughts run in strong contradiction. Characterize the listener by appearance, action, and dialogue.

10. Write a scene in which a central character does something palpably outrageous-violent, cruel, foolhardy, obscene. Let us, becasue we see into his mind, know that the character is behaving justly, kindly or reasonably.

11. Write a scene in which a man (or boy) questions a woman (or girl) about her mother. Characterize all three.

12. Two friends are in love with the same person. One describes his or her feelings honestly and well; the other is unwilling or unable to do so, but betrays his or her feelings through appearance and action.

Fictional Place and Time

13. Write a scene involving only one character, who is uncomfortabe in his or her surroundings: socially inadequate, frightened, revolted, painfully nostalgic, or the like. Using active verbs in your description of the setting, build forceful conflict between the person and the place.

14. Write a scene with two characters in conflict over the setting: One wants to go, and one wants to stay. The more interesting the setting you choose, the more interesting the conflict will inevitably be.

15. Write a scene in which the character's mood is at odds with the weather and make the weather nevertheless express his or her mood: The rain is joyful, the clear skies are threatening, the snow is comforting, the summer beach is chilling.

16. Write a scene containing a flashback in which the information about the past is crucial to the understanding of the present.

17. Write a scene that begins with a circumstantial summary and then moves to a scene in slow motion.

Point of View, Part 1

18. Write a short scene about the birth or death of anything (person, plant, animal, machine, scheme, passion, etc.). Use all five areas of knowledge of the editorial omniscient author. Be sure to: Give us the thoughts of more than one character, tell us something about at least one character that he or she doesn't realize, include something from your past or future, and deliver a universal truth.

19. Write a love scene, serious or comic, from the limited omniscient viewpoint-objective observation and the thoughts of one character. Make this character believe that the other loves her or him, while the external actions make clear to the reader that this is not so.

20. Write about a recent dream, using the viewpoint of the objective author. Without any comment or iterpretation whatever, report the events (the more bizarre, the better) as they occur.

21. Write a monologue from the point of view of a mother-your own or imaginary-laying down the rules for the child.

22. Place a character in anumcomfortable social situation and write a passage in the limited omniscient, in which his/her dialogue is in sharp contrast to his/her interior monologue.

Point of View, Part 2

23. Write a short scene from the point of view of anything nonhuman (a plant, object, animal, Martian angel). We may sympathize or not with the perceptions of the narrator, but try to imagine or invent the terms, logic, and frame of reference this character would use.

24. Write from the point of view of a narrator who passes scathing judgmentson another character, but let us know that the narrator really loves or envies the other.

25. Let your narrator begin with a totally unacceptable premise-illogical, ignorant, bigoted, insane. In the passage, let us gradually come to sympathize with his or her view.

Theme

26. Take as your title a common proverb or maxim, such as power corrupts, honesty is the best policy, walk softly and carry a big stick, haste makes waste. Let the story make the title iironic, that is, explore a situation in which the advice or statement does not apply.

27. Identify the belief you hold most passionately and profoundly. Write a story that explores an instance in which this belief is most true.

The whole story can be simply the assignment itself, or, more likely, a part or section of the whole story. [That is, you may add other elements to the assignment to complete the story.] Please make sure that you mark on your story which assignment you are responding to.

Note: assignments have been taken from Janet Burroway's Writing Fiction (Fourth Edition)

• An exercise for rewriting dull situations inspired by Burroway

• A series of revision exercises from Florida State's Creative Writing program