Tag: practice

Writing Exercise: THE MAP

“So far we have been exploring language-based strategies, but sometimes you will want to start with a specific idea, or event, as the basis of your creative text. This is what I call a referent-based strategy. Referent here means the object or event to which the text refers. The referent for a creative text can be an object, event or mood on which the text is based.” 

Smith, Hazel (2005) The Writing Experiment; strategies for innovative creative writing, Allen & Unwin 

‘Write a short creative text using one of the following referents: the mirror; the map or the machine’ 

They peered at each other uneasily,breathing ragged, crowded close together by the deep shadow, the still distant whoops and curses of their pursuers coming closer. The tall trees creaked, yet seemed unconcerned. All other animals had wisely fucked off at the first sign of trouble. 

“I think we’re in a bit of a spot here Bobby,” said Micky. She could’ve been waiting for food, almost still but arms clanking as she crossed them over her chest. Kev and Pauly bobbed their heads up and down like fearful chickens and rattled. They could pass out any moment. It would have been comical if not for the very real threat revving closer each passing second. There wasn’t much of the twins, they couldn’t be expected to hold up in a scrap, thought Bobby. The Unit would kill them. They were drunk, probably off their tits from magic dust as well, and looking to get mean. Really mean. They could ill afford to get caught. 

Bobby bent quickly and snatched up a stick. He pointed to Micky, then the other two muppets, and motioned them behind him in a loose half circle. He squatted in the loam, clearing debris away with manacled hands to make space, and drew a large rectangle. He then put little arrows within the centre of the shape, added tightly bunched X’s to the top middle, groups of jagged circles to the right side of the arrows, and a series of straggly looking W shapes on the left from the top down to the lowest. When he got to the bottom of the map, he just scuffed out the line all together, and spat.  

“Right then,” Bobby said aloud. “There’s 10 of the guard, and only us four little turtledoves. I’d bet my beaver everyone else is toast.” He pointed to the arrow shapes. “We’re here in the middle of the scrub, on foot, with our hands still in chains.” He jabbed at the crosses near the top. “They’re belting towards us on those nasty quads. There’s a fuck ton of rubble to one side, then the pits,” he indicated the jagged circles with the point of the stick, “the sea is on the other, and at this time of year it’s cold and angry.” Bobby then slashed along the scrubbed out section of map with the stick. “And If we keep going this way we’ll hit the wasteland.” 

“No thanks,” said Micky drily,tilting her head to one said and looking intently at the map. The twins’ heads bobbed again in unison. Chook, chook, chook. Pauly was a strange tinge of green. 

 Bobby twisted slightly and grinned up at his friends. “Getting out of this will be a piece of piss,” he said, cackling and clapping his hands.

Writing Exercise: Hokusai

EXERCISE: “Try to discern a story that you could create from what you see in the image (below) and whatever it may suggest to you. Now, write in response to what you saw. This is a free-form fiction writing exercise and there is no right or wrong and no rules except that you need to keep writing until you have filled one A4-sized page.“

Hokusai, K. c.1823-1829 Behind the Great Wave at Kanagawa

“When it stops being weird, it’s time to go home,” a voice rang happily from behind me somewhere.  

I looked disconsolately out the window, the gleaming metal and elegant rooflines of Japanese buildings mixing haphazardly among powerlines, billboards, and garish neon lighting. 

Impending doom was coming; bright white frothing and curling like the waves of an elegant Hokusai, vivid colours and nifty linework obscuring the concrete certainty that lay behind the two-toned blue of the wave. 

Doom. I was being cast out of the country, forcibly spat from the depths. Out from the wave of Japan, and on to somebody else’s dry land to be dealt with, or not. 

The Narita Express rocketed northward, but gently, unconcerned with my morose mood. 

An immaculately coiffed trolley lady rolled past, deftly navigating the passage while flinging beer cans, chu-hi, chips and change towards those looking for a snack, the airlocked carriage that separated the smokers from the sensible gliding shut behind her. 

“Go Shaimaseeeeeen,” she trilled, politely as she moved along.  

I didn’t bother responding. My hands stayed where they were, uncomfortable at my side. The man next to me didn’t stir either, being so typically Japanese. Taciturn. Well turned out. Professional. Unreadable. 

The voice behind me continued, and this time I focused a bit more. Better than contemplating ruin, even from the perspective of fine art, an admirably Japanese concept, I thought blackly. 

“You see, there’s a whole lot of weird shit in Japan, bubbling to the surface every day. And we get to see some of it,” came the voice, a bubbly female one, clipped and precise despite its casual delivery and conversational tone. Even the curse sounded professional.

English teacher. Either Australian or Kiwi – the accent smothered like it had been thrust deep into the bottom of a backpack, then sat on firmly to make sure nothing poked out. 

“One of my co-workers, he used to do some bartending on the side at a proper whisky bar in Yokohama…” 

“Whisky bar?” said her companion, an Aussie bloke, his age indeterminate, but gravelly voice easy enough to recognise. 

“Proper, whisky bar.” She emphasized the word proper, as If to imply that there were other whisky bars that were just for pretend. “Side street. No signage. One door. One bar. Jazz music. Only serves whisky. Japanese kanji name tags around the bottles. Shit stuff at the bottom – not much of it. Expensive and rare shit at the top. Proper.” She finished listing with finality while her companion whistled softly, impressed. 

I groaned. Just a little, but enough to get my seat mate’s attention. I felt a change in my space as his muscles bunched a bit, and his focus flicked to me from wherever it had been hiding. 

“He told me a bloke used to ride up to the bar, every Monday and every Friday, on a girl’s pushbike,” she continued, relishing her tale as it grew. She laughed. It was a beautiful, happy laugh that made me hate her. “It even had the bright streamers, flower basket and everything.”