Storytime (blog 11)

Writing Stories- Blog 11

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Blame Andrew!  And your Blog council (Brigit, Evelyn, me).  or Emily’s post on twitter fiction.  A little bit of creative writing never hurt anyone.

The idea is to stretch your writing abilities by writing stories.  This also ties into the Williams book on writing as we are focusing on writing characters.  Even in non-fiction like Paper 2 or your White Paper, writing clearly

and with a narrative style can be very effective.  There is room for imagery, for creativity, for passion in these kinds of writing too.  By the way, some management research has also shown that story-telling is a key skill for managerial success.

So, we challenge you to work on your story-telling.  We are looking for a short story, a character sketch, a scene, a captured moment of dialogue, or anything else that conveys a story.  A prior class did something similar where they imagine the future.  Here is what I wrote then, for fun.  

There is some flexibility, but here are some ways to proceed.

1) Look back over your own older posts and pick one where you can imagine telling a story.  If that doesn’t work, use a different topic, issue, or such from the blog.  If that doesn’t work, you can use something else that is topically related to the class.

2) Think about who are characters in your story.  What motivates her or him?  how would they speak?  What is the source of drama or tension in their situation?

3) Free write you story.  Play with dialogue, with detail, with how character’s actions can say more than dialogue sometimes.

4) Experiment with genre or format.  Maybe your story is a series of tweets (these are shorter than what you should do)?  Or emails?  Or, it is a scene from a movie or TV drama?

5) Read it. Edit it.  Re-write portions.

6) Enjoy yourself.

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