Date: Sat, 19 Jul 1997 12:28:59 -0500 From: Indigo Subject: EXERCISE: Hehehehe... silly old man. My Creative Writing teacher in high school was a Kook. This isn't to say that he was all bad, he was just a little bit on the nutty side. He was the one who gave me the inspiration to /want/ to beocme a writer, and the arrogance to believe that I could do it. I took his class through three semesters, even thoug hit was just a repeat of the same stuff over and over again. However, he only made me particpate in the class on occasion after semester one. The rest of the time, he sent me off to work on writing my own ideas out and turning them in for credit. One of the more amusing things the old Kook did was had us do this exercise. It gave me such joy to parody such a mockery of science fiction that I thought I would share it with anyone else who wanted to get a kick out of writing a story like this. He said: Alright, you're going to write a science fiction story about time travel. The parameters are this: You have a hero and a villain. Each of which has the time travel devices, which is a wristwatch. The villain intends to kill the hero by escaping back in time and making sure that he was never even conceived. Now, write your story. This was ismply preposterous to me. A watch? /Come/ on... the typical Villain Vs. Bad Guy? Geesh... well, I ended up writing the best comedy story I have ever written. Unfortunately, I have lost it. It was supposed to be a 'serious' story, and the rest of the class took at as such. Not me, ha ha! I had loads of fun with it. The hero was bumbling, and couldn't understand why he couldn't fly, nor why he had to wear this digital watch, or why everyone else had this fascination with digital watches. The villain was equally bumbling, rubbing his hands together and saying 'Muhahahaha' at least once a page. See what you can do about it. It's an excellent exercise, and one that has stuck in my head for a long, long time. ;) (o) (o) -----------------------oooo--()--oooo------------------------------------- "Too low they build who build beneath the stars." - Edward Young "Hitch your wagon to a star." - Emerson ---- Stacy Griebel Writer, Thinker, MU* Administrator, Dreamer ---------------------------------------------------------------------------