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Warm-up exercise: Lunch
Writing Exercises
Writer's Toolbox
Freewrite for 10 minutes about lunch—any lunch you had during the last week that sticks in your mind. Where were you? Who were you with? What did you eat, or not eat? What else was going on? Maybe you skipped lunch; write about that.
—MS
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Living vs. being based
The order of things
Phrases and clauses
The handy dandy 5-W sentence
Warm-up exercise: Scar
Interview with Mary Schendlinger
Warm-up exercise: Television weeping
How does narrative die?
Beware of getting involved
Acronyms and otherwise
Sentences: Simple, fragment, run-on
Name your agent
Dialogue: Keep it simple
Trim those articles and prepositions
Gerunds and participles: Avoid ING words
The sense of sight
Sentences: A sentence is a thought, not a warehouse
Convince/persuade and other fake synonyms
Morale exercise: Real writers
Lie, lay, laid, lain
"And" or "but" at the start of a sentence
Verbs: Avoid the quiet and the copulative
Trump and trumpery
Narrative exercise: Birthday
Going further with farther
Function shift
Warm-up exercise: Eyes shut
Warm-up exercise: Lunch
Sentence fragments
Issues—the word