Date:         Sat, 24 Feb 1996 12:54:04 EST
From: hard to lose <mbarker@MIT.EDU>
Subject:      EXERCISE:  A Quick One or Two
Comments: To: anyone out there? <writers@mitvma.mit.edu>

[Assuming that whatever happened has now passed--the phase of the moon
having turned a corner, or perhaps the gamma ray blossoms having
faded?  in any case, assuming you are out there reading this...I
always hear when there is a problem, but sometimes it is hard to tell
when the difficulty has ended...]

Start with some vague notion of characters, setting, and so on...

1.  Pick a number from one to six...come along now, pick your number.

2.  Look up your number in the following quotes from "The International
Thesaurus of Quotations" by Rhoda Thomas Tripp...

a.  Orthodoxy: That peculiar condition where the patient can neither
eliminate an old idea nor absorb a new one.  Elbert Hubbard, The Note
Book (1927)

b.  Give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of
himself!  Robert Louis Stevenson, "Crabbed Age and Youth", Virginibus
Puerisque (1881)

c.  The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is
right.  Learned Hand, speech, New York City, May 21, 1944

d.  A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is
constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

e.  To understand is to forgive, even oneself.  Alexander Chase,
Perspectives (1966)

f.  It [television] is a medium of entertainment which permits millions
of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain
lonesome. T.S. Eliot, New York Post, Sept. 22, 1963

2.  Pick a number from one to six (roll that die, roll...)

a. flu  b. head cold  c. laryngitis   d. diarrhea  e. nausea
f. toothache

(pick your favorite illness, infirmity, or other bodily distress!)

3.  Pick a few Characters, give them some goals (preferably
conflicting), put them in a scene, and afflict one with the illness,
another with the quote (essence or actual words--your choice).

4.  Ready on the mental set?  and...roll 'em.

Write it down.  Expand on it.  Polish it into something you are proud
of.

Be reading you!
tink