Week 8 Blog

Week 8 Entry

This week our class continued reading flash fiction stories. One of our assignments was to read Fireworks and Burnt Toast and then perform the writing exercise. In my opinion, a list of ideas for a story can be beneficial because it gives the writer random, yet interesting topics. If one is having trouble brainstorming ideas for a story these types of lists can really come in handy.  

At first, looking at the five prompts did not help give me any ideas. I wanted to write about something that caught my interest, I didn’t want to choose. Then a story idea finally came to me and I couldn’t stop writing. I found it strange that the title I chose (Child of a Short Spark), really had nothing to do with my actual story plot. With it being a short story and all, only a couple of the words in the title showed up in my story once or twice. Overall, I enjoyed the exercise because while writing, I realized that ideas really just come to you out of the blue…it doesn’t necessarily have to be related to certain topics.

We also did an exercise in class where we were to write a paragraph that included at least two characters, one being ourselves. We wrote the paragraph in first person, third person, and then in the point of view of the other character. It was really easy to write in first person; I knew everything I was thinking and feeling. Writing in third person was a bit more challenging…I wanted to keep writing “I”, but obviously had to avoid that. The most difficult was writing the story in the other character’s point of view. I had no idea how to even begin. Although the other character is a good friend of mine, I didn’t exactly know what she was thinking. This exercise was interesting because again, it made me think in a different way. Writing in someone else’s point of view was difficult. By doing this, one can see that everyone really does think differently. Not one person can think or feel the same emotion as another.