Browsing Archive: February, 2010

[Fiction] Friday - Campaign Terror

Posted by Ronda Levine on Saturday, February 6, 2010, In : Fiction

I haven't participated in the Fiction Fridays at Write Anything for a while (I've been working on my short story collection, Santa's Cheezborgers) but I thought I would give a go at this week's Fiction Friday exercise. This week's challenge:

Pick a book of fiction you’d never read (e.g., if you read sci-fi, pick a romance). Open to a random page and read the last couple paragraphs of the page. DO NOT TURN THE PAGE. Now continue writing the story. Feel free to change the genre as you write.

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How to Create a Story Arc

Posted by Ronda Levine on Friday, February 5, 2010, In : Creativity

A story arc is another word for "story structure," but this term goes back to Aristotle's conception of what makes an aesthetically pleasing story in Poetics. A classical story demonstrating dramatic structure generally has three parts:

The Inciting Incident - This part of the story sets things up, piques our interest and gives us a taste of what's to come. The best stories begin "in media res," in the middle of things.
The second act - This part of the story builds through rising action unti...

Writing Poetry Wednesday - Sdrawkcab and Forwards

Posted by Ronda Levine on Wednesday, February 3, 2010, In : Poetry

This poem comes from a poetry prompt given by Robert Lee Brewer at Poetic Asides. The assignment was to write a poem backwards - either numbers, or days or backwards in time. Robert wrote a poem using the alphabet in reverse order. Here's the result of my tinkering with the exercise:

Sdrawkcab and Forwards

Life scribed for us in a mirror
Daeh pressed up against a wall
Daisies eid and life sdne
Feeling all crazy and pu-dexim
Walking forwards, sdrawkcab gniklaw
Crawling at complete standstill
Windows...
Continue reading ...

Generating Good Ideas for Research Papers

Posted by Ronda Levine on Tuesday, February 2, 2010, In : Academics

Chances are, you feel a severe case of anxiety in class when you need to come up with a good research paper idea. Whether you are working on a senior research paper or you need ideas for your presentation, coming up with paper ideas can be a daunting task. Here are some tips that worked for me when I needed ideas for research papers, ideas for a senior thesis, and even ideas for a dissertation when I was contemplating writing one.