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Writing Exercise 1 Part 1


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Write one sentence that is at least one hundred words long. Here are the rules: It has to be a good sentence. You can’t use unnecessary, superfluous adjectives and adverbs. It has to make sense and sound right when read aloud. And it has to be punctuated properly. It can’t be a run-on sentence and it can’t be a series of sentences strung together with commas and semicolons (no splices!). It can be about anything, but it has to meet the word count.

 

Give it a try and post what you come up with next week on Monday we will move on the next step.

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100 words.  For context, you must speak it with the hysterics and accent of Hedonism Bot from Futurama

 

 

 

Whilst languishing in my bath late last Saturday afternoon, dreaming of football glory in the forthcoming Super Bowl, a drink in my hand and soft music playing in the darkened, candle lit chamber, I had a madly confusing, difficult to believe image appear in my wandering mind: a boy standing on a beach, dressed in billowing swim trunks, his hair flowing out in ribbons of gold, touched by the sun and glowing in early dawn's light with a sureness to his stride, walking towards the water like a young ocean demi-god returning home after a battle fought in distant lands..

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100 words exactly.
 

A truly successful organic dairy and chicken farmer will always rise very  early in the morning, while the morning air still has the nights chill to it, even before  the sun peaks over the distant horizon in most cases, to ensure all the hormone free feed is properly distributed to the farm's various animals, as well as makes sure the fresh eggs, laid the previous night by the clucking hens are collected and the freshest non-pasteurized milk is collected from the still drowsy cows before they fully wake and become very ornery and stubborn making milking a nearly impossible task. 

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I'm sorry, ken barber, but what constitutes a “good sentence” is subject to interpretation and is inherently fraught with peril – it can be a grammatically-accurate series of words that are strung together without any egregious spelling or syntactical error; it can form part of an academic treatise that takes a complicated idea and breaks it down into chunks small enough to be communicable in elegant fashion without sacrificing academic integrity; finally, it can also be a long introductory internal monologue replete with adjectives, adverbs, and verbs that are extremely abusive of punctuation marks such as quotation marks and semicolons.

So as you can see, before I can work on a hundred-word sentence, further clarification is necessary! :D

Edit: This is not a submission because the above-mentioned statement is only 99 words in length!

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I apologize Ken but as I am not Shakespear, Edgar Allen Po, or another author in whose lifetime excessively flowery and complex language was considered a positive and skillful display of good taste and writing capacity, I must refuse, on moral, ethical and professional grounds, to indulge this puerile butchering of the English language and proper writing skills on the grounds it has no and can never gain any reasonable purpose or legitimacy, as such legitimacy not only should flow but could only flow from the development or enhancement of a necessary proficiency in either a useful skill or a domain of knowledge.

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The harsh wind howls through the devastated dwarven settlement of Gast, mercilessly scattering dust and leaves past the unmoving half-elf lying in a pool of blood, the body showing signs of massive damage: a dozen arrows sticking out from his chest, back, and thighs, his mangled hands missing a few fingers from an axe strike, his bare feet still smoldering from a Fireball spell, loops of grayish-purple intestines spilling out from a gaping sword wound on his abdomen, both eyes gouged out by a dagger, vocal cords ripped out of the throat, and stiff lips frozen with his final song.

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She looked across the ridges of rock rising and falling before her in small mounds and valleys, listening to the lulling song the ocean's rhythmic rise and fall sang as it leapt against the stony shore, eyes wide open despite the red glare of the dying sun and breathing in the salty scent of clean air as it wafted across her cheek and lightly shook the long curls cascading across her shoulders and down her back, but not strong enough to deter the singular tear that traced a hot trail down her features which rapidly cooled in the soft breeze.

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As the sun completed its beautiful setting that evening, the sky a myriad of pinks, purples, and blues, I was struck once again by the awesome power such a simple every-day occurrence wielded over my mood as the traumatic events of the last 24 hours faded behind the blazing horizon and the memory of Colin’s gentle kiss brushing like a breeze against my lips, his passionate desire for me unmistakable, if the feel of him against my thigh was any indication I could trust, all the while his determination to allow me to take things slowly winning the battle over his own raging hormones.

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Eyes the color of sapphires, hair the color of blood and armor of gold glinting in the sunlight, the young lean man stood on the hilltop squinting against the sun his bow he had drawn taught as he scanned the valley below for a target unknown but there a deer wandering aimlessly only to become tonight's dinner yet what fate lay ahead few could foresee as the day yet held much mischief but the man, not thinking of the future, let loose the arrow and secured his meal with a loud thud that echoed off the walls of the canyon.

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Just a comment though, ken. If this is meant to be some kind of writing game, it should probably be moved into the Fun & Games subforum :)

Its not a game. These are actual writing exercises from a Brown University Creative Writing course. I have a whole bunch of them and will be posting a new one each Monday. Some are fun and will seem like games but they are designed to help writers improve and think outside the box. This is kind of a first step in writing workshops on the forums.  

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