By request, the Writing Tips Group will now offer weekly writing exercises. Similar to The Two Word Challenge , each week someone will present a writing prompt and challenge the group to publish an article in response. This will differ from the other in that the prompt will include a common theme or writing tip, and poetry and images will not be included.
To illustrate and to start the project off, I challenge everyone to write an action scene about one of the scariest moments they have experienced, showing instead of telling the action.
My writing tips include:
Passive voice slows action
- Unnecessary adverbs and adjectives slow action
- Infinite-verb phrases slow action
- Modifiers slow action
Examples of good and not-so-good action scenes:
She was reading a book when suddenly a dog viciously attacked her son. Not-so-good
She dropped the book and ran. Jason screamed, arms over face, as the dog tightened his teeth on his tee shirt and yanked him off the ground. Better
In the comments section of this article, add additional tips or ask questions if you have them. Publish your response to the challenge as an article, in the Writing Tips Group, with Writing Tips Challenge in the title and tags.
Sample Titles: Writing Tips Challenge: Sandy Knauer's Scariest Moment, or Writing Tips Challenge: The Night Aliens Invaded My Car
If you write a complete story around your challenge scene, please highlight the scene by either bolding or underlining the text. I will try to catch the links to all submissions and include them in this article. If I miss yours, please notify me so I can add it.
All group members are welcome (encouraged) to submit challenges to the group as long as the challenge includes writing tips and the instructions bolded in this article.
I hope everyone has fun with this!
And thanks, Donna C., for this fun idea.
Writing Tips Group homepage /viewGroup.jsp?grpId=3659174697239083
Entries: (to be updated daily)
/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976775016 Treasure, John Knight
/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976774929 Dusk On The Lake, Linda Douglas
/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976774888 Eric L's Scariest Moment
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Comments: 42
(I'll play along, but know you are already a writer).
But wow, Sandy, I appreciate the compliment more than you know since it came from an accomplished writer like yourself.
Frick, was this your scariest moment?
I do have a story idea, but not a lot of time to write it at the present time.. It would be about the first time (and one of the last times) I did stand up comedy and blanked out after 30 seconds on stage. Yet, I managed to stay up for nearly 5 minutes.
I may "recycle" a scene I've already written...
I better stop reading, and start writing!
I've been wanting something just like this since I joined! Awesome.
And as Ferrero said, I want honest critiques. No patronizing, please :)
A few of those writing prompts even turned into full stories, of which ON EAGLE'S WINGS is one shining example. :)
Oh, and I gave y'all a 10. :D
~~Becka
I was reading my rag book when Sparky clawed me?
lol j/k
oh 10/10 here to compensate for numbnuts!!
I thought maybe I would pull the 'action scene' from each submission and publish them together under the group name for critique at the end. That way, we wouldn't be focusing on the author, or the entire personal story, and could look only at the writing in the action scene.
I'll await feedback from the group before doing this. What do you think?
Mine got a few very nice comments, but I really would like a critical view as well. I pull some pretty "out there" moves when I write, surely they're not all working well. I feel it would be very helpful if we could somehow critique anonymously too.