Organic images exercises

I'm learning to find my voice from Finding Your Voice by Les Edgerton and I'm going to put myself out there and post some of the writing exercises. I'm supposed to "create a line or three that gives a metaphor or image that could only "work" within the parameters of that environment and that environment only" (pg. 128-129).

1. You're writing a story from the pov of a nun teaching a history class in a parochial high school in Kentucky. The situation is, she's just caught Brenda cheating on an exam.

"Brenda. Your hand. Show it to me."

Sister Agnes stands over me like a fence post shadowing the prairie grass. I open my palm and wait for her wrath.

2. You're writing an article about lawn care for a magazine. You've interviewed dozens of experts and are focusing on some common mistakes lawn-care nuts make in caring for their pride and joy patch of Bermuda bent.

You can in fact over water Bermuda grass. The experts say your lawn will look mud hardened as if your neighbor dumped their car wash water onto your lawn so no one will know they wasted precious water for the sake of vanity.

3. You're penning your autobiography. You grew up on the hard-scrabble, mean streets of Gobbler's Knob, Michigan (population 303), and you're describing a Little League experience from your childhood.

If you didn't toe up and play, then you better show up and scream the corn flakes out of your guts cheering. Me, I played once and took that ball in the eye. Then hot-tailed it to first base swerving like Ms. Matkin driving down the street and swatting at Herman to pull his arm back in the car.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 2nd, 2011 at 10:17 pm and is filed under Writing Exercises from "Finding Your Voice". You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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