Creative Writing
Journals for Week 5
Hutchinson
Page 91: Try This 4.2
 If people are characterized by the objects they choose,
own, wear, and carry with them, they are also revealed in
what they throw away. Garbology is the study of society or
culture by examining and analyzing its refuse. Write a
character sketch by describing the contents of your
character’s waste basket.
Page 89-90: Try This 4.1
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Choose a character you have thought and written about before. Fill out the
sentence:
(name) is a (adjective) year old (noun) who wants _______________
.
Then, quickly jot down what makes your character:
 Laugh
 Flinch
 Yell
 Blush
 Get a lump in the throat
Finally, write down answers to the following questions:
Imagine your character in a situation that produces one of these emotions.
 What does he or she want in a situation? What is the deep, abstract
desire? What, in this specific situation does he or she want that would
fulfill, at least temporarily, that desire?
Page 137: Try This 5.3
 Write two pages beginning “Get me out of here.”
Page 271: Try This 9.4
 Identify the crisis of the story you are working on.
Describe that moment with details involving at least three
senses.
Page 273: Try This 9.6
 Put your character in motion, on foot or in a vehicle, in
urgent search of something. What does he or she need?
Why so urgently? Let us know in a flashback of no more
than three sentences. Avoid the words remembered,
recalled, thought back to, and others of their ilk.
 Add a character. In dialogue, let us know some important
thing from the past. Add music. Let the music trigger a
memory good or bad, in thought or dialogue. Let the
memory reveal something we didn’t know before, in no
more than two sentences.