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Our exercises are designed to be short and sharp, focus on a small area of writing and take less than ten minutes. We hope you find them useful.
Putting yourself in the mind of a character
This is a group exercise we undertook in January. It involves selecting one of the characters from a list and writing a scene about them.
We had several sentences to choose from:
- The devil contemplating his war with God
- A successful model facing death in a plane crash
- The Angel guarding a teenage gang member
- A middle aged businessman on death row wrongly convicted
- A teenage girl on the eve of her arranged wedding
- A man who has found the answer he was looking for
- A rabbit chased by a pack of dogs
- A record company man who has just found the best band in the world
You could add many more to this list if you chose to do so.
Here are a selection of the results. See if you can guess which sentence the writer chose.
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They rose up over the hill and covered the landscape.
I thought, much like a plague would spread through the body.
I bit my lower lip to stop it trembling as I knew that if that started, so would the rest of my body.
The adrenalin and fear fought each other to pump around my body, or was it my heart beat, beating so hard that I thought at one point I might sound like a coin in a tin can.
I sweated with just the sheer weight upon my body.
God knows how my impatient horse felt as he munched on his bit.
My comrades and I would boast about past wins and always show how confident we are.
But there always should be fear.
If you did not, you were not human.
I felt that the fear in steals confidence in me to charge fourth.
I found great comfort before going into almost certain death in the beast beneath me, and that we are all doing this for the same thing, to protect the king.
Heartbeat beating rapidly, legs in overload, muscles now tiring.
It's only a short time now before the flesh ripping starts. There in the distance a glimmer of hope, the welcoming darkness of home.
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Oh how I wish that there was someone to whom I could appeal.
What did I do to deserve this?
Everyone I have spoken to says the same thing:
'Keep your head down, just try and stay focused on each day as it comes.'
So that is it, don't think, don't complain, get on and do it.
But how do I just face each day as it comes when each day bleeds into the next, becoming unrecognisable as a separate frame of time?
And he doesn't help.
Look at him.
No more concern for his own life than an ant.
He is stretching my compassion for a fellow being beyond endurance.
But this is my lot, and the way things appear at the moment, it won't be long before I am out of here.
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The look of surprise was quickly subdued and I glanced at the people around me.
Had anyone noticed?
It didn't look as though any of them had, but they were a devious lot.
I stared at the screen, screwing up my face, then touched a button on it to change the program.
The screen flickered and the desktop picture came into view.
I moaned and put my head in my hands.
Only one person asked if I was okay, to which I answered, 'no'.
'Take a break,' they said.
I walked out of the office to the hallway to get a tea.
Only when no one was around did I grin.
No one would know but me.