Saturday, January 8, 2011

Can You Do It In Three Minutes?

I saw this on Word Count over at Visual Thesaurus. It really made me think about this whole writing thing I do. As a writer, sometimes I forget the magic of throwing tiny symbols onto a page and conjuring an image in a stranger’s mind. Well, I forget until a really amazing book draws me away from this world, and deeply into another.
In the spirit of that, I tried this little writing exercise. I took this sentence:
The woman stood on the hillside and looked down at the valley below.
And wrote for three minutes.  Here’s how it went.
The woman stood on the hillside and looked down at the valley below. The green leaves of the trees blended into a lush carpet that reflected the rising sun behind her. She wanted to believe that no monsters could come from such a place, but she knew the truth. She’d carried the awful secret for decades. It was time to face the creature that crouched below the green. Her legs trembling, the sharp dawn light throwing her shadow ahead of her in angled lines, she started down the steep hillside. In her hand she carried a dart gun. She’d only had enough poison to make one dart. She had one chance to save the world. One chance to . . .
So, can you do it three minutes?
Here’s some inspiration by way of eye candy. . .

No comments:

Post a Comment