At our writing group meeting last night, we worked on a couple writing exercises. The first was a poem writing exercise. The type of poem was the Kimo, an Israeli variant of the haiku form. Here’s the rules:
- No rhyme scheme.
- Ten syllables in first line
- Seven syllables in the second line
- Six syllables in the third line
- Most Kimo poems are focused on a single frozen image.
Below
are the two images I used and the poems I produced.
Two tracks
Two tracks cutting across an empty field
Scars from so many journeys
Left in Earth’s memory.
Apples
Was the first temptation red,
green, yellow
Knowledge gained from just one
bite
Sin comes in all colors.
***
The second activity was a series of questions designed to think
about characterization. The idea is to take a simple sentence and see how adding character details can enrich the character and catalyze the plot. Here is what I produced.
1. Start with a simple sentence introducing a
character and have an action.
Billy jumped from the hayrack.
2. Write six physical traits about his character.
- 68-years old
- Gray-haired
- Tall
- Suntanned
- Brown-eyed
- Strong.
3. What is one thing this person cares about?
Tradition.
What is one flaw that this character has?
Stubborn.
5. Write three sentences that include the action
from the first sentence and some of the traits from above.
For fifty-four years, Billy had bailed this field, first
with his grandfather then his father and now his own grandson. He might be
gray-haired, long-in-the-tooth, as they say. By God, though, he could still
jump from a moving a hayrack and land okay.
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