Monday, August 18, 2008

Olympic Emotions Writing Prompt


The Olympics are full of emotion and present a great opportunity to learn how to show emotion rather than tell about it. As swimmers slap the wall in a close race they look up at the official times to see the reality of who won. The camera isn't on the board, it is on the swimmers. Their faces SHOW it all!

Pick an Olympic event and challenge yourself to write a paragraph that shows the emotion on an athlete's face. If you have time, I suggest you do more than one. These paragraphs will come in handy later when you write a story that requires joy, nervousness, crushing defeat...

Learning to incorporate real emotion in your writing is like the difference to watching the official times on a board, or seeing the emotion on the athlete's face. Which would you rather see in your writing?

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For a wealth of writer prompts check out my book Pumping Your Muse. These prompts can be used separately or used to pull together a fleshed out novel outline.

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