FOR WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26:
EXAMPLE:: "He drove the car carefully, his shaggy hair whipped by the wind, his eyes hidden behind wraparound mirror shades, his mouth set in a grim smile, a .38 Police Special on the seat beside him, the corpse stuffed in the trunk." ~ Univ. of Iowa Writing Lecturer Brooks Landon (2005)
Imitation: “She brushed the wolfhound arduously, her strong hand undeterred by the task, her eyes watery on account of the dog’s strong smell, her mouth locked in a firm grimace, her purse on a nearby table, the Greenie wrapped in a wad of Kleenex inside the closed purse.”
Imitation exercises:
1. “For a time he fussed with the dishes,
whistling to himself as if the subject had been settled.”
~ from The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien (1990)
Imitation:
2.
“The Pacific is no place for rowers, especially when they are weak and
blind, when their lifeboats are large and unwieldy, and when the wind is not
cooperating.”
~ from Life of Pi, by Yann Martel (2001)
Imitation:
3. “It is a wilderness that is beautiful,
dangerous, abundant, oblivious of us, mysterious, never to be conquered or
controlled or second-guessed, or known more than a little.”
~ “An Entrance to the Woods,” by Wendell Berry
(1981)
Imitation:
4. “At night I’d
toss and turn around in bed, half awake, half asleep, imagining how I’d sneak
down to the beach and quietly push one of the old man’s boats out into the
river and start paddling my way to Canada.”
~
from The Things They Carried,
by Tim O’Brien (1990)
Imitation:
5. “There is a valley of ashes – a fantastic farm
where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where
ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with
a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the
powdery air.” (ß Championship round!)
~ from The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
Imitation:
