Group writing activity

Materials: Tabloid magazines—enough for one for each group of students.

What to do:
Begin with a discussion of where ideas for fiction come from. Discuss the notion that while ideas can come from the newspaper, the author needs to turn the story into fiction by introducing character, plot, dialogue, setting, narrative tension, etc. Newspaper stories may give ideas for some of these things, but rarely would contain all these elements.

Purpose:
The purpose of this activity is to you think about where fiction comes from, and suggest that story ideas can come from anyplace.

Activity:
Write not more than a page in which you use the situation in a newspaper article your group decides to use. But include: a named character you create involved in the action. The scene must also include:

1) your favorite piece of clothing

2) a famous person (other than any who may be in the article)

3) a one word opening sentence, one word closing sentence

4) one direct quote

5) dialogue

Example:
Hollering. Ella heard it coming from the road and scrambled down the hill toward the sound. A motorcycle and two men lay in the road, but the man yelling had gone silent. Ella stood at the side of the road, looking at the two men, one, the silent one, 'mashed on a bed of razor-sharp seven inch nails!' "Is there a doctor?" Ella whispered.

"I'm a doctor," said a fading-blondish woman.

"You're not a doctor, you're Dr. Joyce Brothers," said the moaning man under the motorcycle.

"Indeed I am she, a celebrity personality doctor." And indeed, Ella could see it was the woman she knew from Hollywood Squares, and Match Game. Perhaps a Magnum PI rerun. She was older than on TV, a little fatter, and was wearing a stunning black silk kimono and little else.

"Help these men," Ella pointed, rather sickened by the sight of the now silent, impaled man. He twitched a little like the butterflies she had improperly chloroformed before pinning them into her insect collection. "Those spikes look razor sharp!"

"Indeed, they do," said Dr. Joyce Brothers. She reached down and grabbed the man's hands, pulling him with super-human celebrity psychologist strength from that spiked board. Ella heard the little sucking pops as the man's body separated from the more than 600 razor-sharp nails. Pop, pop, pop, pop. Suck, slurp. Pop.

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