Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Exploratory Writing

Exploratory Writing

Epilogue to the Outdoor Wood Stove. It turned out that the problem with the stove was air in the pump as well as a plug in the line and a shorting pump. Yes the three of these were at issue to one degree or the other but the final problem was air in the line. After repeated attempts I cracked the lines with the motors going and air spit out and the water finally started circulating. Still it demonstrates that with persistence, money, and unlimited time anything is achievable. The stove is now working beautifully. What do you suppose the moral to that story is.

New writers tend to get an idea and just go off and start writing about it. It’s like learning to swim by jumping off the end of the pier. Rather than discourage this natural inclination I have been thinking about developing a course at New Horizon’s Academy (NHA) that takes advantage of it.

I am thinking about naming the course “Exploratory Writing.” The reason I like the possibility is because it is a technique I have been using here at WDC and one that really dovetails with and takes advantage of the other tools the site offers.

First of all it would be an NHA course and that is a real benefit to new writers. Second I have found that as a teacher of the One Act Play Course that my students are often in a quandary coming up with a story line and characters that are worthy of all the time and effort that goes into writing a drama. Third it would be a great prerequisite for my class because it would give time to do some pre-course development.

The idea came when I looked at some of the story lines my students came up with not to mention some of the characters. What this course will do is give them time to think about story line, and character development before engaging in a more serious undertaking. This is my concept of how it would work.

The idea would be to write a weekly vignette or poem and enter it in a contest. There would be two contest options, a new contest under the auspecies of New Horizon’s Academy or one of the fifty contests on the WDC list. These vignettes would be episodic and use a common back story. In the last week the vignettes would be brought together into a larger work. It would be like serials that are all related to one another.

The class would last eight (8) weeks and the students would write six vignettes or six poems for six contests. These could range from flash fiction (short poems) to more fully developed short stories or poems but they would contain the same characters and give opportunity for developing broader ideas ideas.

Anyway this is a technique I often use that I call “Exploratory Writing.” The reason it works so well at WDC is because the writer gets feedback from the system, and the contest prompts force the author to go off on tangents, in the course of which, new characters begin to emerge and the story line builds momentum and takes on new twists. Students would be encouraged in the prompts to do character development.

So this would be the Lesson Outline for the eight weeks. Note that these are also some of the Dramatic Ingredients essential to telling a good story or writing an allegorical type poem.

Prompts/Lessons

Week 1: A Special Person (Central Character)
Week 2: A Want, Need or Desire
Week 3: A Life Changing Event
Week 4: Crisis One
Week 5: Crisis Two
Week 6: Crisis Three
Week 7: The Thread Outline
Week 8: The Comprehensive Outline

In the last two weeks of the course the student would collect their vignettes or poems and write (1) A story outline and (2) the last week a comprehensive outline which would include the story outline and the dramatic ingredients plus a synopsis of each of the stanza themes/chapters (vignettes)

This would set the student up for writing a larger work. In the One Act Play course they could hit the ground running and be ready to take real advantage of the next eight weeks instead of scratching their heads and wondering about the story line and characters they need to be coming up with.