I heard about a improve exercise on the weekend that I think is also a good little way to practice your writing ability. The idea is to take 10 random words to write a little story on the spot that use all those words. I think it would be fun for every where to give it a try and let everyone see what they come up with. The rules are simple: 1) write a mini story 1 to 3 paragraphs that use the 10 words in the list. 2) write it free form, meaning don't plan anything out just write it as it comes to you. 3) you can use alternate forms of the words in the list. 4) don't read other entries until you've finished your own. The word list: 1) Coin 2) Shoe 3) circle 4) virus 5) Natasha 6) lost 7) window 8) red 9) sound 10) falling Good luck and I look forward to reading them! [Edited by - TechnoGoth on May 16, 2006 12:00:41 PM]

I did one of these for a university application once. Lemme give it a go.


Natasha took the coins nonchalantly. Though elated by the prospect of eating well again, she knew that the exchange was not a charitable one. She had a job to do and her hands would be red by the night's end.

Her benefactor was a noble, one of the faceless bourgeoisie of Taylin's Crossing. His name and motive were lost to her; she cared little about the politics of the upper class. In her mind, they were a virus to the city. The assassin only associated herself with them when she could profit from the infection.

The falling rain masked her entry. The creaking of the upstairs window and the inevitable sound of her shoes pattering across the floor became part of the white noise of the storm. She grinned weakly as she circled the bedroom: it was almost too easy.

Her blade flashed in sync with the lightning, the din of thunder echoing alongside the last screams of an innocent man.

[Edited by - Radiostorm on May 15, 2006 9:19:08 PM]

Um ...

ex·or·cise

1. To expel (an evil spirit) by or as if by incantation, command, or prayer.
2. To free from evil spirits or malign influences.

Quote: Original post by LessBread
Um ...

ex·or·cise

1. To expel (an evil spirit) by or as if by incantation, command, or prayer.
2. To free from evil spirits or malign influences.

Nope sorry, that didn't include any of the 10 words but feel free to try again.

hmmm, TechnoGoth? I think LessBread was trying to point something out. The very NAME of the thread YOU initiated, in fact.

I think you were trying to spell exercise, but spelled it exorcise, which means something completelly different, as he gave the definition of it.

But it's fun anyway...

I accidentaly made it game related, is that okay? [wink]

===

Fucking two minutes. Fucking Natasha. Somehow, she had managed to screw up yet another perfectly good attempt at some coin. The scrounged clothes, the scruffy shoes - no more than mocassins, really - and the dirty hair were perfect. But she'd once again gotten lost on the way to the target during the two-minute window and the heist was off.

That meant no money, no grand entrance for Karim into the criminal underworld, and no notoreity for the hapless pair. On the plus side, it also meant no killing of the ubiquitous Good Samaritan Guard; no thick red smear would mar the steel and circle a rapidly expanding, newly faceless corpse. Not today, anyway.

Still, Natasha seemed to be a plague on Karim, an imp and a virus on his very life force. Failing some sort of miracle, his PvP rating would fall faster than Killer366's when the guild found out he was really a kitten breeder in real life. Fucking WoW.

===

I can’t really start an exercise and then not participate so here is my piece of improve writing.
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The sound of shoes hitting pavement echoed through the alleyway. Sporadic lights created twisted shadows causing Natasha to cast frightened glances at every patch of darkness. She had been on the run for days now. Cold, hungry, and alone she was lost in city overrun with creatures she could barely fathom let alone describe. All the time wondering why her? The circle whoever they were had infected an entire city with a virus turning the population into some kind of monsters. All just to kill her. One day she was fishing coins out of a fountain to buy food, the next she’s living in some kind of lovecraftian nightmare.

Then the lights went out. Suddenly darkness consumed the alley way. Natasha’s heart pounding like a jack hammer as fear and panic begin to overwhelm her. Franticly she search for something, anything, some hint of light to let her know the world still exists. But there in the shadow her fears become reality. Two red eyes shining in the distance, crimsons beacons of death drawing ever closer. Near. So near. It must have been there all the time silently stalking her. How could she have not seen it before? And if there was one there had to be others close at hand.

It lunged forward an over powering aura of death and violence hit Natasha like bullet, knocking her backwards. But instead of feeling hard brick, her body went crashing through a window, falling like so many broken shards of glass to the uncertainty that lay below, injured but alive.

1) Coin
2) Shoe <
3) circle <
4) virus <
5) Natasha <
6) lost
7) window <
8) red <
9) sound <
10) falling

A single lost coin. A single 25 cent piece whose value is defined by a numerical value has caused all this bloodshed. To fight and risk something not worth the reward; a foolish act indeed. Why? Why did they fight? Why did they do this? As I looked up into the WINDOWS of the on looking innocents in horror. As I looked into their eyes which reflected souls filled with nothing but fear I realized the truth. We didn’t fight because we wanted the SHOEs or COIN. We fought because we wanted to fight. Their was no means to an ends because fighting within its own means. Killing within itself had its own gratification. I realized that we were truly not human.

For what makes a human? Is it the human form? Is it the soul, the mind? Is it their conscious ability to think? No, for all things possess a mind body and soul. And consciousness was a phenomena that when occurred granted beings souls. Simply through consciousness. Simply through thought even clones could somehow gain detectible souls. The great philosopher Viktor E. Frankl once said that gave man specifically a gift that they gave no other being. He said that between stimulus and response, there is the power of choice. It is that choice that defines humanity. But even at birth god denied me of that choice directly due to my mother’s pitiful fear. People say that they began their decent to hell after they die, and that baby’s are born with a clean slate. This is untrue, I’ve been FALLING into the pits of hell every since I was born.

Everybody has a major phobia that regardless of what anybody says they can never face, and my mother’s just happened to be the pain of child birth. She wanted a child so much, but at the same time feared to the point of suicide the pain it would cause. So much so that she used ancient magic banned by god himself when he destroyed the tower of Babylon so that she could have a painless child birth. Although Jesus died for our sins a woman’s sacrifice and eve’s eternal punishment is the pain that a woman feels in childbirth. She did not realize that even without God’s fury that pain was necessary. For in that great pan great respect and unconditional love is grown for that child. Smited she was on that day, cursed forever was I on that day.

I am damned by god himself thus I cannot be human. I am a demon. A demon with no choice but to kill, no alternative but murder. I was like a VIRUS infecting all with the pains of death. A grim reaper that’s fated to feel more sorrow than I have caused. As I thought about this I hear the SOUND of NATASHI’s voice right before I delivered the final blow. “And as ye spread sorrow, so shall ye feel.” Did I really love her? Could a being like me really love? A lose/lose situational scenario that I cannot escape. I am a LOST cause who is already FALLING into the pits of hell. All I can do is take pride in this unnatural strength that I possess and begin to enjoy the murder after murder! All I can do is take pride in my ability to cause sinful acts and digress fully into the darkness which is I! All I can do is take solace in the fact that regardless of my shortcomings
NO ONES TALLER THAN THE LAST MAN STANDING!

I find exercises like this only fun. I look at them as something to do quickly but not as a way to improve my writing skill. For some say that they get better at writing the more they write. That may be true for them, but it is not the truth for me.

It seems that my writing skills are directly porportional to my wisedom, knowlege, and genius. The more I learn and grow, the more my horizen and self-concept is broadened, the more understanding I gain of this world and the people in it the better my writing gets.

I find that both of those are true - ability and practice.