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Pif Magazine
ISSN: 1094-2726
Published by:
Pif, LLC
PMB 248
4820 Yelm Hwy SE
Suite B
Lacey, WA 98503-4903
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- Doing the ten exercises below will improve your sex life.
- The ten exercises below can be used to teach writing students, or you can use them yourself to generate fresh ideas for poems, stories, or essays.
- I owe many thanks to the dozens of professional writers and writing instructors who contributed to this article.
If #1 is not the lie, please let me know what you’re doing.
"Two Truths and a Lie"
While at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference this past summer, a group of us began playing the old drinking game, Two Truths and a Lie. We’ll call our speaker Julie. Julie said, "#1 – At last year’s conference a staff guy professed his love to me on the first day. #2 – At last year’s conference Hannah and I flirted with the idea of sleeping together. #3 – At last year’s conference I went to a concert in Chattanooga and asked the whole band to sleep with me." Someone immediately guessed that #2 was the lie because it was the only statement that implicated another person by name. And he was right.
A version of this can be used in the classroom (sans Jack Daniel’s) by having students write three paragraphs (two truths and a lie) and read them aloud with the group guessing which is the lie. This exercise neatly teaches several principles of writing: the necessity of lying well, how to do that, and how fiction can be more believable – and certainly more interesting – than the truth.
-Thanks to Shari Fineman, Susan Davis, Gina Piccalo, Whit Coppedge, Gina Hyams, Anne Burt, and Colette Sartor
"Deliberate Mistranslation"
Find a poem written in a language you don’t know. (If you are a teacher giving this as an assignment, withhold the name of the author.) You may choose something by Ovid, Leopardi, Mandelstam, etc. Produce a translation of the poem without the help of a glossary, a dictionary, or a friend. "This experiment encourages the recognition that writing is or can be a collaboration with the language (or with several languages). It also dramatizes the notion that poetry is a system of sounds, and it gives the writer license to have a good time, be inventive, and take advantage of the natural randomness of words and word-associations. Many pseudo-translations seem to have an intuitive sense of what the original was ‘about.’ Thus the exercise provides practical evidence of the point T. S. Eliot made, apropos of Dante: that you can enjoy poetry before you understand it."
-exercise and quote from David Lehman
"My Mother Never…"
Jesus, how many different ways could that end. Simply take those opening words, and write a short story. A good companion exercise works similarly with the opening lines, "I wish my father knew…"
-"My mother never…" exercise by Lynn Freed,
via Douglas Bauer
"In a Name"
With a group, write down names (real or fictional) and three self-descriptive attributes. Compile all names and attributes on a single page, and distribute this list. Then decide, based on the sound value and association of the name, which of the attributes might best fit the fiction of the name you’ve chosen. Write an initial paragraph or short poem developing character from the name, using as many of the attributes as you want – or none. Afterwards read your paragraph or poem to the group and defend your combinations of names and attributes. This exercise gives writers an opportunity to discuss what sound and rhythm do for developing point of view.
-exercise from Page Richards
