Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Show But Don't Tell: Epistle Practice

With Valentine's Day just a few sun rises away, emotions can get the best of anyone. So, let's practice writing a letter to one of those emotions!

Feelings come from our reactions to life happenings, so our job as a writer is to focus on those life happenings in our writing.

Your directive is to avoid using the word at all, other than in your title. Dear ______, or To _______. You are imitating "To Mockery:" (because I'm arrogant!) because it was a poem that came exactly from this type of writing exercise.

Think about these things as you write:

  • No emotions named!
  • Craft actions/situations that represent the emotion, instead.
  • Create images of the emotion through those actions
  • Create a metaphorical (don't use cliches…) image that stands in for the emotion.
  • Use internal thoughts that people have when in a situation that causes a certain emotion.  

No comments:

Post a Comment