Our book identifies these four as sources of imaginative writing. Go to the website of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Links to an external site.) and choose one of the pictures listed below. Write four opening lines for a story based on that picture. Each line must capture one of the sources. For example, for Girl with a Pearl Earring (Links to an external site.) by Johannes Vermeer:

Dream: I will wear this on my wedding day.
Risk: Perhaps my mistress will never miss this; she has so much jewelry.
Mystery: No one would ever guess that the key to the whole puzzle lies in this earring.
Play: The last time I wore this, I had an adventure I will never forget!
Here are the pictures (you can search the site by typing in the title of the picture).

The Organ Rehearsal by Henry Lerolle
Judith with the Head of Holofernes by Lucas Cranach the Elder
The Stolen Kiss by Jean Honore Fragonard
The Happy Mother by Jean Honore Fragonard
A Dance in the Country by Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo
Tea by James Tiss

Journal 3 – Experiment with Genres

Choose one of the opening lines you wrote in the above exercise and write a continuation in three genres: the start of a story, a few lines of a poem, a piece of creative non-fiction. Don’t worry if you don’t complete these. The idea is to experiment with different genres, to help you choose the genre you want to write in for your major creative work during the rest of the course.

Although certain plots or characters seem to demand certain settings, it can be fun to deviate from the expected. This exercise allows you to play with blind choices and figure out how to make them work.

Preparation: Choose four numbers (from 1 to 10). Each number corresponds to an item on the Mix and Match Lists.Preview the document The numbers don’t have to be different (for example, you could pick all 4’s if you wanted to). The first number is the character your story will focus on, the second number is the setting, and so forth.

Exercise: Write one or two paragraphs in which you introduce your character, setting, time and situation/challenge. You do not have to solve the problem; just describe it. For example, suppose you chose a high school teacher, a car wash, during a snowstorm, who has just witnessed a robbery. Your paragraph could be something like this:

John didn’t know why he decided to go to the car wash in the middle of a snowstorm. Maybe he was just frustrated with trying to grade his sophomore’s essays on the Constitution and decided that some fresh, if frigid, air would clear his head and improve his disposition. He never imagined that he would emerge from the blast of dry air at the exit of the concrete cave just in time to see a man knock a woman into a pile of slush and grab her purse. The man was on foot; John was in his newly washed car with the motor running. He didn’t hesitate.