Creative Writing: Exercise 2

As part of our creative writing project, we are working with writer and creative practitioner David Napthine to provide you with a weekly prompt /challenge to encourage creative writing at home.

This is the second of these prompts and it will run from the week of Monday 8th June. You can read more about the project here.

Exercise 2. Fragments

Many writers overhear snippets of conversation or see something to prompt a story. So imagine this is a notebook full of a writer’s random jottings. Take one jotting at random from each section and then link them into a piece of creative writing

1.       A girl drinking coffee in the rain

2.       A farmer in a public bar

3.       A dog chasing a push bike

4.       Small child in empty livestock market

5.       A fat man walking a small dog

1.       A body tumbling out the opened boot of a car

2.       A fist slamming down on the table, making the cutlery jump

3.       A brick being thrown

4.       A hat being trampled on

5.       A hand scrunching up paper

1.       Being uncomfortably aware of the elderly lady knitting in the corner of the room, who seems to be watching everything closely.

2.       Trying not to look at the person opposite

3.       Pretending to read a book

4.       Staring in the shop window

5.       Hearing a voice when there is no one there

1.       “If only I could make you see what I see.”

2.       “It wasn’t like that”

3.       “What do you mean? I wasn’t there”

4.       “I never said he kissed his wife”

5.       “Of course I love you”

Don’t worry about making it “good” – that will come later. Just enjoy writing and immersing yourself in the moment. At the end of the seven (or how many days) read what you have written. You will be pleasantly surprised by how much you have seen and heard, of how you’ve described it, and what thoughts and feelings have been provoked by the exercise.

If you’re happy to share, David will then work to then weave the responses into an epic story to be shared at a later date.

Email your writing to [email protected] . All writings will be treated in confidence.   Each piece of writing will be kept intact for later public presentation (with writer’s permission).