Date:         Sun, 7 Jul 1996 09:30:49 -0400
From: a wandering tink <mbarker@MIT.EDU>
Organization: These Words Were Made For Writing, Inc.
Subject:      EXERCISE:  A razor, a cross, and YOU?

Quick and quirky.

Start with your character in mind, please.  Male/female/other,
young/old/immortal, good/bad/interesting, all those little things
that make someone fun to know.  And with that person in mind, go
on...

1.  Pick your number (one to six, please?)

    1.  a razor
    2.  one card from a deck of cards
    3.  a photograph
    4.  a fork
    5.  a postcard
    6.  a tube of lipstick

2.  and again?

    1.  a cross
    2.  a small wooden buddha
    3.  a copy of the Book of Mormon
    4.  a plant
    5.  a book of poems (poet?  You pick one)
    6.  a stopped clock

3.  Last, but not least.  One more number.

The last time they met, this was

    1.  a person who your character would happily kill
    2.  a person who would happily kill your character
    3.  the person who stole your character's lover
    4.  the lover who was stolen from your character
    5.  a person who was busily making a fortune by stepping on
    people
    6.  a person who intended to kill to become famous

So, on to the scene.  Your character (should they follow
directions) has just walked into a room (where?  You decide).
In the room is a body, the two objects, and the person.

It seems likely that a crime has been committed (a body, after
all, is somewhat suggestive).  However, as usual, you may elect to
do something else (hospitals have bodies.  Morgues.  A garage has
a certain kind of body.  And then there could be other reasons for
a body to be there - perhaps one or more of the characters has a
slight tendency to the vampirish side?  Or is tonight the night
for a sacrifice to Baal?)

And of all the people that might be at the scene of a crime, for
it to be this person!

The objects?  You can mix them into the crime, you can use them to
help resolve the old conflict between these two, you can even
forget them.

Before you let yourself go wild, don't forget that both characters
should have goals or directions that they are going now, too.  We
know they had a problem in their previous life.  But where are
they going now?  And how do those directions coincide or collide?

So, if you would, let us see this scene through your words,
through your writer's eyes.  Make it lurch along, a breathless
pace or perhaps the fine slow paced detailed description of
minutia making every second seem like an eternity.  Show us the
hidden secrets of these two people, ill-met over the bloody corpse
of a corpulent stock-broker or perhaps well-met in the hospital
ward where she whom they both worshipped lies on the border
between life and death.

I.e., write.

One Sentence?

    As she knelt and felt the neck of the corpse, she stared at
the person sitting there and said, "What are you doing here?"

You may use this as the beginning point for your story if you
like...

Be reading you real soon now!

tink

(who has to admit that due to the difficulties of connectivity
from Japan, I have not been reading all the writers' mail.  don't
worry, I have piled it up in a large mound of bits just waiting
for me to get back and start plowing through it.)