Posts Tagged ‘interrogation’

Wordspark #006: First thought, best thought?

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010
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It’s very easy sometimes to fall into predictable patterns with our writing. We start something new initiated, perhaps, from a free-writing exercise and we just see where the pen leads us. This is, of course, what free-writing is all about: writing without inhibition, self-censorship or concern for trifling first-draft issues such as layout and spelling, which can be dealt with later. Our aim with a free-write is to get words on the page. Making them good words can come later.

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But also think about what you like to read. Most of us, whether consciously or not, start to build expectations about where a story is going from the very first page, the first paragraph or even the first line. This happens while you are writing too – you start to speculate, and the most obvious ideas tend to come first. When you read, do you like to be able to predict the course of a story, or do you like to be taken somewhere unexpected? For most of us, it’s the latter, so maybe sometimes first thoughts aren’t best.

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