Yesterday, at the National Arts Gallery in Ottawa, we were walking up the ramp along the glass wall to the galleries behind two young boys with their mother.
An elderly, very smartly dressed couple started down the ramp. The man stopped as he and his wife were about to pass the boys. He leaned towards them. Pursing his lips, he started to Continue reading
A chameleon sentence begins with one energy and ends with another.
Usually it starts off positive with maybe even suggestions of light-heartedness, but then turns into something more ominous. But there’s no reason why one shouldn’t try the reverse.
While chameleon sentences make for terrific beginning sentences, they can shift the narrative, and surprise and engage writer and reader at any time.
Two Examples
The Exercise
Write 6 chameleon sentences – each one beginning a new story. Surprise the sentence. Surprise yourself.
What chameleon sentences have you come across in your readings or writings? Please share them in the Comments Box.
Got half-an-hour to treat yourself to a fun writing pick-me-up?
Try this writing prompt that Stephanie Ein* gave to my writing group this week. It’s very energizing – has roughly the same effect as a couple of very strong cups of coffee. No choice but to write in the moment.
Let me know how it goes.
*Stephanie Ein is a teacher, writer and part-time comedian who has performed at numerous comedy clubs around Montreal and beyond. In November 2011, she founded “Love 2 Laugh Montreal,” a group of volunteer stand-up comedians.
I treasure the stories I fall in love with, not only as a reader, enjoying them for the terrific stories they are, but also as a writer, trying to learn from them by working out the secret of their magic.
My most recent love is “Reception” by Nona Caspers that appears in the Spring 2013 issue of The Kenyon Review.
There are a whole slew of reasons why I fell for this story: the striking image at the beginning, the way every detail echoes and reverberates with other details, the oddness of the details and images, the beautiful, clever ending that both illuminates the narrator’s experience and goes beyond it. But I especially love it for the pointers it gives me about back-story and writing forward. Continue reading
I received a lovely email from a friend congratulating me on a publication. Great news, he wrote, you deserve it.
I deserved being published? Why? What had I done to deserve it? Continue reading
Susi Lovell 