Irvine Valley College

Online Creative Writing Workshop

Writing 10 - Introduction to Creative Writing

Spring 2012 - Ticket # 64580

Marjorie Coverley Luesebrink, MFA, Instructor

Weekly Exercises

Week 4 - Place and Setting Exercises


Marjorie Luesebrink

I am going to do two little sketches here to show the import of setting up the "possible world" in the landscape (these examples might be from a children's story, but the technique is easier to show that way).  In A. I am early in a story that will be a fantasy, the characters will escape into the woods to discover fairies and an ancient King who will reveal something (I don't know what - this is a sketch!)  In B. the same characters are in a Sci-Fi story, and they are going to be taken on a space ship to a city in another galaxy.  This little exercise is to show the difference in the strategies for marking the world.  Differences are in red.  (This is silly, but I hope instructive!)

A.  Amanda and Randy were lost!  Amanda scanned the dark curtain of pine trees to see if she could see some landmark.   Randy retraced their steps for a few yards hoping to see a path back, but he was stopped by the dense, deep green underbrush.  Finally, they sat down on a little hillock covered with emerald grass.  Randy was cold, so Amanda untied the sweater from around her waist and helped him into it.  

"So, what now?" Randy asked, still shivering a little.

"I don't know.  But don't you think this forest looks different, somehow?"

They both looked around at the woods, once so familiar, that now seemed so misty, almost enchanted.  The air was filled with a gauzy, golden haze; the wind sounded like the laughter of little fairies; wings brushed their foreheads and glanced off into the leaves.   The trunks of the trees rose up all around them like the towers of lost castles.  An early dew had settled in the shadows, glinting like diamonds in the last pale light.

Suddenly....

B.  Amanda and Randy were lost!  Amanda scanned the dark rows of pine trees to see if she could see some landmark.   Randy retraced their steps for a few yards hoping to see a path back, but he was stopped by the thorny spikes of the underbrush.  Finally, they sat down on an old, rusty car fender to think about where they might be.  Randy was cold, so Amanda untied the sweater from around her waist and helped him into it.  

"So, what now?" Randy asked, still shivering a little.

"I don't know.  But don't you think this forest looks different, somehow?"

They both looked around at the woods, once so familiar, that now seemed so alien.  The air was still and clear, yet they could hear a roaring sound in the far distance.  The light was otherworldly - pale ice green, cobalt blue in the shadows.  The trunks of the trees rose up all around them, so tall they seemed to reach into the endless, deep blue of the sky, as though they went to the edge of the universe.  A strange dew had settled on the leaves, almost like liquid chrome, heavy and insistent. 

Suddenly....

two stories, almost exactly alike, except in one, the reader begins to associate with fairies and fantasy, in the other, the reader begins building a world in which car bodes are old and rusted, the whole universe is the playground, and weird things can happen.

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Enjoy the Magic!

Marjorie Coverley Luesebrink, MFA, your Instructor, is a Professor of English in the School of Humanities and Languages, Irvine Valley College, Irvine, California.

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