Making Writing Exciting
A series of writing prompts, tips, and challenges for fiction and creative nonfiction authors of all ages
Our usual format is to discuss something to do with writing briefly, then go to a writing prompt and...start writing! We have access to a room for 50 minutes. Sometimes we go over. Oops. After writing for twenty minutes to a half hour, volunteers read what they've created and we comment.
Comments focus on what we like about each piece. Not typos or supposed errors.
OK, enough chitchat. Let's start right in.
(Alex Hiam, Amherst, Mass.)
PROMT #1.
Read the opening paragraph to Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1883).
Group discussion (ten min. max):
What clues does the author give about the upcoming story? How does he hint at excitement or adventure?
It's going to be told by a young man, apparently. Do you like first-person stories?
It's obviously old-fashioned. But does it seem interesting? What elements of this opening might 'hook' a reader and make them turn the page?
Why did Stevenson use just one sentence in his opening paragraph?
Now, Write!
Write the first paragraph of a more modern pirate / treasure story. It should be a quest for hidden treasure. And there should be hints of danger and mysterious strangers such as the pirate who came to Stevenson's imagined inn. See if you can craft an opening paragraph for your own treasure quest novel. And see if you can write it in a single sentence that gallops along, enticing readers to keep going.
tick tick tick
Great work!
(In future I'll try to post examples of responses to the prompts. Save yours if you're doing this off line and email them in if you want them added here. Thanks!)
Example #1. Modern Pirate Story Opening from Prompt:
I'd just turned fifteen when we docked in the main harbor of Seven Palms Island and my Dad went ashore to pick up food and supplies while I stayed on board our little sloop to keep robbers away and to sew a patch on the sail we ripped in the last storm. Dad had told me not to let anyone come aboard not even if they said they were from Customs but I couldn't stop the boy from jumping on deck he was moving too fast and besides the man with one leg who was following him had a pistol and so instead I said, "Down the hatch, hurry!" and I locked us both in the cabin.
The boy was panting and looked really scared. He was younger than me and looked like he was from the island--T shirt from a local bar and bare feet. He was carrying a rolled up old chart in his hand. "Don't let him get it!" he said, handing it to me just as we heard the thump of that wooden leg on the cabin top above us. And then he was pushing open a portal and squeezing through it. Splash, I heard him hit the water on the far side of the boat, and then, Bang! I heard wooden leg shoot his pistol.
I opened the chart table (the top swings up for storage) and tossed the roll of paper in with our collection of old charts. Bang! another shot range out above me. At least, I thought, that must mean he didn't hit the boy the first time.
And that was how my adventure started. I'll tell you the rest of it, except I can't show you that chart. The information on it might get someone killed. Someone else, that is. There's been enough death and destruction already. But that's what treasure does to people, I guess. It's been that way in the Caribbean ever since the time of the old pirates, and it turns out their gold is a lot more valuable now than it was back then.
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Comments: Uses a running sentence in the first para to create a fast reading pace, like Stevenson does in Treasure Island. First person narrative by a boy who is also caught up in some sort of treasure story. The map comes to him under strange and dangerous circumstances in the second paragraph. He hints at future adventure in the fourth paragraph. Seems like the beginnings of a fun story. Maybe it's time now for a modern update on Stevenson's Treasure Island. Not the exact same plot, but referencing it here and there for fun!
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