An abecedarian, according to the Academy of American Poets website:

The abecedarian is an ancient poetic form guided by alphabetical order. Generally each line or stanza begins with the first letter of the alphabet and is followed by the successive letter, until the final letter is reached. The earliest examples are Semitic and often found in religious Hebrew poetry. The form was frequently used in ancient cultures for sacred compositions, such as prayers, hymns, and psalms. There are numerous examples of abecedarians in the Hebrew Bible; one of the most highly regarded is Psalm 118 (or 119 by King James numbering). It consists of twenty-two eight-line stanzas, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Chaucer’s “An ABC” is an excellent medieval example of the form. He crafted his translation of a French prayer into twenty-three eight-line stanzas that follow the alphabet (minus J, U, V, and W).

Examples:

Coming soon!

This writing prompt is inspired by the Wallace Stevens poem, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” as well as Kenneth Koch‘s assignment in his book, Rose, Where Did You Get That Red? “The poetry idea was, ‘Write a poem in which you talk about the same thing in a number of different ways,’” Koch writes.

In this version of the assignment, first worked out with students in Arc of Rennselaer County, we made up the “ways of looking” as we went along.  We were in a classroom at The Arts Center of the Capital Region, its windows facing the Hudson River, which lent itself to modeling our poem directly with Stevens mention of a river (“The river is moving./The blackbird must be flying”).

1. Turn X upside down and write what you see.

2. Where does it live? What kind of weather is there?

3. What would a child say to it? Use exact words (baby talk), or describe what a child would say or talk about upon first seeing X.

4. Describe its eyes. Or “eyes.” What is X looking at? Is X sad? Happy?

5. What is your favorite part of X?

6. Think of a nickname for X. Then address it with a question. Begin: “Oh, X, how/when/what if, etc.?”

7. Go to the nearest window. Describe what you see.

8. Two parts: a. Tell us what you do to get to sleep; b. Then tell us how X goes to sleep.

9. Think of the person you most admire. What would your favorite person say about X?

10. Flying through the air, _________ (what does X do?).

11. Numbers, equations.

12. The river is _______. X must be______.

13. Just mention snow. You don’t have to use the word snow. Just think about it and write something. Or snow.

Group sestina. Generator here.

Abecedarian, using alphabetical order as its design. (Psalms 31:10-31, the famous “virtuous woman” passage,” is actually an abecedarian acrostic using the Hebrew alphabet.)

Exquisite corpse.

One line at a time (without concealment, as in exquisite corpse). Called a “simple pass” here.

Renga.

One word at a time–out loud, with a note-taker, or with one person typing, or both writing/typing.

“All Together Now: Collaborations in Poetry Writing.” EdSITEment. National Endowment for the Humanities. Contains lesson plans for grades K-2.

Poetry comics.

Bouts-rimés, or rhyme challenge. James Addison, as he is quoted this entry in The Wikipedia, describes this as a “[list] of words that rhyme to one another, drawn up by another hand, and given to a poet, who was to make a poem to the rhymes in the same order that they were placed upon the list.” Here is an encyclopedia entry.

Some peer-reviewed research on collaborative poetry in the classroom.

Gillespie, Charles. “The use of collaborative poetry as a method of deepening interpersonal communication among adolescent girls.” Journal of Poetry Therapy. 18:4 (December 2005), 221-231. <http://www.cottonwooddetucson.com/pdf/Staff_Arti>.

Gillespie, Charles. “Recovery Poetry 101: The use of collaborative poetry in a dual-diagnosis drug and alcohol treatment program.” Journal of Poetry Therapy. 15:2 (Winter 2001), 83-92.

Here’s how poet and editor Robert Lee Brewer defines Skeltonic Verse, sometimes Tumbling Verse:

Skeltonic verse is named after the poet John Skelton (1460-1529), who wrote short rhyming lines that just sort of go on from one rhyme to the next for however long you wish to take it. Most skeltonic poems average less than six words a line, but keeping the short rhymes moving down the page is the real key to this form.

Here is an example of Skeltonic verse from the man himself:

The Tunnyng of Elynour Rummyng by John Skelton (L1-L11)
Tell you I chyll,
If that ye wyll
A whyle be styll,
of a comely gyll
That dwelt on a hyll:
But she is not gryll,
For she is somewhat sage
And well worne in age;
for her visage
It would aswage
A mannes courage.

Examples of Skeltonic Verse in Rap

Five hundred years on, Skeltonic verse is alive and well in performance poetry and hip-hop. Here are some examples from the period of hip-hop when I was growing up.

You’re a back-seat queen, a elevator pro
A high-powered body makes your Levis grow
See the stories I’ve heard, they could amaze
I heard she did it on a motorcycle back in the days
So calm down freak, get a G.E.D.
That’s a General Education on Decency
One day you’ll see, and agree with me
unless you’re gonna be a freak until you’re 93
For you there’s no fee, everything is free
This is from me to you, not you to me
Every night is your night, your leather pants are tight
You try to shake your butt with all your might
I don’t really wanna dis nobody
You might think I had a little too much Bacardi
But that’s not the problem, the problem’s Yvette
How bad can a girl’s reputation get?
See she’s the kinda girl all the homeboys met
If you’re desparate ask Yvette, cuz she’ll say “Bet.”

—from “Dear Yvette” by LL Cool J [1:30-2:38]

Yo Kangol, I don’t think that you’re dense
Buy you went about the matter with no experience
You should know, she doesn’t need a guy like you
She needs a guy like me, with a high IQ
And she’ll take to my rap, cause my rap’s the best
The educated rapper MD will never fess
So when I met her, I wasted no time
But stuck-up Roxanne paid me no mind
She thought my name was Barry, I told her it was Gary
She said she didn’t like it so she chose to call me Barry
She said she’d love to marry, my baby she would carry
And if she had a baby, she’d name the baby Harry
Her mother’s name is Baby, which is really quite contrary
Her face is very hairy, and you can say it’s scary
So isn’t not every, her father’s a fairy
His job is secretary, in some military
He throws them to an electric camp that wasn’t voluntary
His daughter’s name is Sherry, his sons are Tom and Jerry
Jerry had the flu but it was only temporary
Back in January, or was it February?
But everytime I say this rhyme it makes me kinda weary
It’s only customary to give this commentary
Some say it’s bad, some say it’s legendary
You searchin’ all you want, try your local library
You’ll never find a rhyme like this in any dictionary
But do you know, after all that
All I received was a pat on the back
That’s what you get, it happened to me
Ain’t that right Mixmaster I-C-E

—from “Roxanne Roxanne” by UTFO [1:17-2:35]

Yes the rhythm, the rebel
Without a pause—I’m lowerin’ my level
The hard rhymer where you never been I’m in me
You want stylin’ you know it’s time again
D the enemy tellin you to hear it
They praised the music this time they play the lyrics
Some say no to the album, the show
Bum rush the sound I made a year ago
I guess you know you guess I’m just a radical
Not a sabbatical—yes, to make it critical
The only part of your body should be parting to
Panther power on the hour from the rebel to you

—from “Rebel Without a Pause” by Public Enemy [0:00-0:43]

Image via Wikipedia

Carrot Farming on the Moon: Pros and Cons

Morton Downey, Jr. and the New Testament: Did the Second Coming Already Happen?

Honey Boo-Boo and Female Body Issues

How Wearing Scrunchies Helps The Environment

We Can Put A Man On The Moon, But Why Can’t We Make Killer Robot Police?

Alf and Saved By The Bell: Better Than The Plays of William Shakespeare

Why Aerosol Cans and Packing Peanuts Should be Ranked as Our Society’s Greatest Achievements

Why All Novels Should Be Written in Comic Sans

How One Direction Saved American Culture

My Parents are Aliens But I Am Not: Some Theories Why This is So

How Casual Fridays Promote Adulterous Office Affairs

Global Warming: The Advantages of the Melting Ice Cap

How My Career in Little League Baseball/Softball/TeeBall Parallels Today’s Political Climate

Why Ben and Jerry’s Should Name an Ice Cream Treat After Me

Why Forwarded Junk Emails Can Solve Today’s Gender Pay Gap

High School Uniforms: Why Everyone Should Just Wear a Plain, Grey Jumpsuit

Why I Will Wear An Elegant, Fuschia Tuxedo To My Wedding

Arranged Marriages: How It Can Work For American Kindergardeners

Evolution, Shmevolution: Why Humans Should Be Classified as Amphibians

How Backstreet Boys Surpass Beethoven in Musical Achievement

Why and How Kim Kardashian Should Get a PhD in Elementary Education

I Am, In Point of Fact, a Fish; While Everyone Else is, In Point of Fact, a Four-Legged Mammal

Is Oprah Winfrey a Robot?  Some Proof

Proof That TV’s Judge Judy is an Alcoholic

Wearing Baseball Caps: Do They Lower Your Intelligence?

Why Albany Should Secede from the Union and Become Its Own Sovereign Country

Everything I Know About Fashion I Learned from Kim Il Jong

Cook a NY Strip with Yankee Candles and Never Go Back to Grilling

How Fritos® brand Corn Chips Can Be Used To Build Environmentally Friendly Homes

My Plans for World Domination: Why It Should Be Supported by the U.S. Government

Deforestation: The Advantages of a Treeless World

How Actor Sean Penn Will Single-Handedly Save The Ozone Layer

Enemas: The Best Way To Release Emotional Pain

Post-It Notes Are Living Organisms, Too

The Little Man Inside Your Refrigerator Needs More Exercise

Why Dry Erase Boards Cause Vertigo

How We Can Better Communicate With Bacteria

Guns Kill Other Guns: Did You Know?

How Coolidge’s “Dogs Playing Cards” is Superior to Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper”

Health Care for Infants: The Overrated Phenomenon

The More You Drive, The Less Intelligent You Are (inspiration here)

How Food Fights can Replace Nuclear Weapons

Domestic Camels: The New Puggle

The Politics of the Zombie Takeover

Oprah and the End of Jersey Shore: The Secret Connection

Subjunctive Interpolation in the Sinister Poetics of the Dickman Twins

How Listening to Death Metal Can Relax and Pacify You

The Pros and Cons of Earning an MFA in Writing: Will it Increase Your Odds of Making the New York Times Best Sellers List?

Why elephants shouldn’t be allowed to use roller skates

Quantum Manifold Shifting Effects on the Layering of Tropes in Post-Modernist Flash Fiction.

People that drive volkswagens care more about the environment and here’s why

Broccoli & Religion

Law and Order Special Victims Unit: How a sex crimes show is uplifting, inspiring and the feel good show we all need to gain spiritual harmony

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats: How Giving Billionaires More Money Is Gonna Empty The Projects

What’s better: Chocolate or Vanilla

How To Steal A Tiffany Diamond Via Three-card Monty

Why Internet Memes Should Be Used as Cover Letter Objectives (inspired by this article: http://bit.ly/RxmAwR )

Fucking Up: Dating Strategies for Maximum Class Mobility and their Potential Pitfalls

Vagina Jokes are Funny Too and Here’s Why

Why We See Jesus in Burnt Toast: Visual Culture and Rhe Theater of the Absurd

Reality Show This! Carnival Act and Freak Show Mishaps

Lucy and Ricky were Right: How Separate Beds Lead to Better Marriages

Pass the Purell: Why a Dog’s Mouth is More Sanitary than the Unwashed Human Hand

Evolutionary Wonder: How the Behavior of Readjusting One’s Crotch Saved the Human Species from Extinction

How Deferment of Student Loans can Give you Good Credit

Glenn Danzig and Kitty Litter: The Intrinsic Connection

Why Saccharin Should Not be Banned

Road Warrior: How Minivan-driving Soccer Moms Have Turned Car-pooling Into Gang Warfare

Midnight Ping-Pong as Explanation for International Politics

Blue Agave Tequila: The Rejuvenating Properties of Worm Urine

How Hot Plates Cause Sterility in Juvenile Mountain Goats

Hair Dye and Male Menstruation: Why You Should Eat More Carrots

Running On The Wheel: Hamster Habitats As A Model For City Planning

Michael Jackson: Thriller or Vanilla?

Why It Pays To Be A Half-wit In Academia

[under construction]

In another assignment, we will be putting together a pecha-kucha PowerPoint presentation of our own. In this assignment you will be improvising a talk, an essayistic talk, using slides provided by your fellow classmates.

Improvisation and chance have deep roots in all of the arts, and the essay is no exception.

Situationsists address this in part  “Theory of the Dérive.”

Steve Benson‘s improvised talks/poems, Carolee Schneemann (1, 2),

The purpose of this assignment is to write a narrative argument with a general readership appeal.

The guidelines presented by Newsweek are that the essay should be: a) An original piece, b) 850-900 words, c), Pasted into the body of your email, d) Personal in tone, and e) About any topic, but not framed as a response to a Newsweek story or another My Turn essay.

Think about the samples: what do they have in common? What are the broad themes the authors are trying to address in their narratives? Are they successful? What do you like about the narratives? What do you dislike? Using the characteristics of a narrative essay presented in class, create your own version of a “My Turn” narrative.

“The essay presupposes an independent observer, a specific object, and a sympathetic reader.”– Graham Good, “The Essay as Genre” in: The Observing Self: Rediscovering the Essay

Think of your own “specific object”; this can be an idea, an obsession, a bee in your bonnet, a story that sticks with you, an embarrassment, neurosis, even a physical object.

Think of a question you would like to pose raise about this specific object.

Ask it.  Write it down.

Try to answer it. Write it down.

Second-guess yourself. Write it down.

Clarify yourself. Write it down.

Go out and find what others have said/written/sung/filmed/danced/mimed about your specific object.  Find at least three you will mention/quote, at least three you will not.

Interview someone about your specific object.

When was the last time the subject of this specific object came up in your daily life?  Write it down.

Imagine a sympathetic reader.  Give this person a name: You/one.

What might this sympathetic reader think of your specific object? Write it down.

What is the opposite/antithesis/absence of your specific object? Write it down.

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They say the truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.  The same would apply, I would say, for made-up news stories posing as truthful ones, such as ones found in supermarket tabloids.  Some of these publications, such as People and Us, strive for some sort of respectability. Others, most notably Weekly World News, worked a far more bizarre route, publishing un-fact-checkable stories that tug on our most bizarre heart strings. That’s why it was so awesome.

Directions:

1. Select a title of a “news” story from Weekly World News. You can do this by running an internet image search, or using some compiled by your instructor, or go through the slide show above.

2.  Write a short paragraph about a real-life event that is inspired by, but does not make reference to, the Weekly World News headline.  If the story is called “Aliens Abduct Hillary Clinton,” in other words, perhaps the headline would be a way for you to begin writing about a recent time you were watching news coverage or having a heated political discussion with a relative or friend.

3.  Try to do more than one and make an entire essay made up of subtitles of “strange-but-true” stories.

Adapted from:

Nissen, Thisbe. “Fiction Through Artifacts.” Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer. Bret Anthony Johnston, Editor. New York: Random House, 2007.

Guests May Not Download Programs Onto Our Computers

They Give Hurricanes Such Pretty Names

I Should Have Told You The Following Before We Kissed:

The Happy Fun of Love

It’s Nice to See Tigers Do This

The Baron Gives an Amused Snort

Tuesday And I’m In My Horrible Chair
Seymour: The Abbreviated Introduction

Oh, Temp Pool Love

Excerpts from Me! The Musical

The Buddha Fired Me

If I Told You Once

We Are All Just Bullets. I Mean This.

Reflections on Jessica Simpson’s Shoes

Kangaroos on a Plane

The Pat Sajak Lecture Series: Excerpts

Amateurish in the Best Sense

Regrets of an Impresario

Focus on Sainty

What I’m Working Into My Memorial Service

My Royal Name is Sir/Lady (pick one) Chatterlittle

To the people who hold to such dismissive claims

Why isn’t it all a waste of time?

Puppies and Flowers

To My Successor at (Your Employer Name Here)

A Detailed Description of My Disco Obsession

10 Perfect Questions for (Celebrity/Public Figure Name Here)

Valedictory for My High School Reunion

Notes on the [Guy/Gal] at Stewart’s

Where My Books Go After I Read Them

Wishes for His Supposed Mistress

In a Kayak, Thinking

Love is a Sickness Pepto Bismol Cannot Cure

Meet We no Angels, Pansy?

Mother, I cannot mind my Wheel

Albanyian Rhapsody

My Delight Might Not Be Your Delight

Five Long Sentences That Have Haunted Me Since I Read Them, and When I Did Read Them I Had to Take a Couple Minutes to Get it Together, and Then I Wrote Them All Down

I never told anyone _____________.

I never told anyone, but I’ll tell you _____________.

[Dorothy Allison]

The last time I saw her she was wearing a fake moustache.

[Denise Duhamel]

While it may be true that artistic pursuits contribute little to the material welfare of a any given culture, art is vital to any society with the capacity to be bored.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my parents it’s this: All futures become old school.

[Peter Davis]

I’ve spent my whole life trying to figure out how to walk down a street with a black man

and not notice that he’s black.

[Matthew Lippman]

“Public servants” pretend they are not, first and foremost, ambitious.

[Jeffrey Morgan]

Only after the rain ended did he smell the peaches.

[Michael Schiavo]

I know he meant to say tangential, but he kept right on saying tangenital.

I’m not saying I’m proud, but I did win an award for that once.

[Kim S. Clune]

All I really remember in those first few minutes was his initial response, which went something like “What do you mean you dropped it? It’s seventy-fucking-one stories, Larry. Seventy one. Now what the fuck are we gonna do? Huh? You asshole.”

[Henry Singer]

I’ve been meaning to tell you this, but you look like a monkey.

The chicanery needed to stop, before any one got hurt.

[Mark Hamilton]

There is a miniature pump doctors call the Berlin Heart.

A little over two weeks ago my Jess looked out the window and then she turned and ran for the door yelling: something’s wrong with Mattie!

[Todd Colby]

The gourd was hardly engorged, but rather wilted and withered.

[Jenny Boully]

The horizon, however flat it may appear from where humans usually stand, is actually the outer edge of a vertiginous spheroid, and therefore almost unbearably round.

This essay deals with the history of turnips.

By now the notion that boiled eggs are tasty is something of a commonplace.

Among the many threats to America’s economic stability, some of which are quite serious, I need to pay my babysitter with something other than loose change.

Where has all the old-fashioned bric-a-brac gone?

[Aaron Belz]

Summertime rested like a nap just on the other side of May.

I’ve got a few hard things to tell myself about myself.

Just because something is as big as a house does not make it a house.

[Shafer Hall]

There is ten things I am going to delve through.

[Jonah Winter]

The following assignment is inspired by and adapted from Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, the critically acclaimed 2004 book by Amy Krouse Rosenthal.

In her book, Rosenthal writes 200-plus pages of entries, written encyclopedia-style, for words and terms involved in her life: people, ideas, items and objects, anecdotes, her own definitions of words, obsessions.  Some examples from the book appear at the end of this handout. Writing style-wise, part of her inspiration comes from reading other writers—from ancient China on to modern times—who wrote in essays that didn’t necessarily weave points seamlessly from one to another, and instead wrote in separate, discrete entries, or an alphabetical format similar to her own.

Your assignment is to write a mini-encyclopedia of your own by writing at least one encyclopedia entry for each of the 26 letters of the alphabet, plus two numbers. These entries can be definitions, short-short stories, zany asides.  Provide at three visual elements: illustration, chart, photo, sketch. Cross-reference at least three entries to each other. The entries can be anywhere from 5-500 words each.  The total word count for the assignment should be 3,000 words minimum.

Some ideas for entries? A favorite (or hated) word, a family name, an artist you love, or idea or concept that is directly related to your own experience.  Perhaps something that triggers a memory from your life.  Movies, books, comics, magazines, celebrities, are all fair game.  Writing is about memory, after all; it’s about chronicling your memory.

Some excerpts from Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life are here.

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More information: What is a manifesto?

Manifesto—from the Latin manifestus meaning clear, “evident”—is defined by dictionary.com as a “public declaration of principles, policies, or intentions, especially of a political nature.”

The manifesto is usually a fairly grumpy document.  The impetus for writing a manifesto is an extreme dissatisfaction at the way things are, and by starting your movement—your “-ism”—you are saying you have a plan to fix it.

You may have heard of The Communist Manifesto, co-authored by Karl Marx in 1848.  The Declaration of Independence is also a manifesto of sorts.

There’s also a history of manifestoes in artistic and literary movements, and that’s where you come in.  Charles Olsen’s “Notes on Projective Verse” is a big, hulking manifesto—important, and a fairly unreadable one at that.  The Guerilla Girls, a collective of female artists manifesto flyer is the most recent example, and is thoroughly entertaining and in-your-face.

So get to making up your own movement, and be prepared to ‘declare publicly’!

The word aphorism comes from the Greek ap-horeizen, which means to set a boundary or define a horizon. A good aphorism, writes, Mark Vernon, “is one that casts life in a different frame, changes our perspective, gets us to reconsider what we took to be true. Pithiness has a purpose: to force us to stop, to look, to think.”

More conventially defined, the aphorism is a brief saying that puts forth a statement, principle or precept on such topics as morals, aesthetics; its aim it to use as concise language as possible.

Steps:

– Familiarize yourself on the subject.  Read examples, both modern and through the ages.  The aphorism is one of the oldest genres in the world.  Part of the attraction of writing aphorisms is that one is addressing the ages, just just our own day.

– Choose a subject, a word, a noun, a concept; I recommend randomly picking one by flipping through the dictionary.

– Use/steal/ape the sentence construction of other aphorists.  There’s a reason why theirs worked.

– Write as many one- to, say, three-sentence aphorism on this subject as you can before your ideas are exhausted.  Then pick another.

– Edit these aphorism sessions down to at least 60 sentences.  Try to include the word/term/subject in all of them if you’re being strict with yourself.

– Put a number before each of them.  This is for reference, sure, but it’s also a nod to previous aphorist’s form and a conceit that your aphorisms are so good, so wise and profound, that references will be needed for further consultations.

– Depending on the context of the assignment, try to write 100 aphorisms.

Other ideas:

Group your aphorisms under a single theme.  These theme can be general, centering around a single idea. Alternately, you can group yours according to subject as well, although sometimes a random assortment of an aphorism collection works better.

Keep in mind your tone. Using high-minded, philosophical language–using general language and lofty goals–might have the opposite effect on readers, and will likely make them draw a blank in response to your aphoristic wisdom.  ”The difficulty with writing aphorisms,” Drew Byrne writes, “is that it’s old and dusty. So dusty, in fact, that most people involved in writing them think it’s something to do with a load of dead poets pontificating. This is a mistake. The only good aphorism isn’t necessarily poetic, an up-in-the-air, arty-farty affair. It’s necessarily an irritant. And if it can’t do that, in the modern age or in the past, it says nothing of meaning.”

Some examples:

Proverbs from the Old Testament of the Bible

Esquire magazine’s Rules for Men

Gracian’s Art of Worldly Wisdom

Ersasmus’ Adagia

Shit My Dad Says on Twitter

Oscar Wilde, “Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young” (scroll down)

“69 Hidebound Opinions” by CD Wright.

The website for James Geary, author of The World in a Phrase, a study of the aphorism and aphorists.

The “wisdom literature” of everyone from Confucius to Robert Bly, adages, sayings, quotable quotes, haiku, and journal excerpts presented as stand-alone works.James Richardson’s work serves as nice examples of the modern aphorism (excerpts here).

Sun Tzu’s The Art of War (and here)

Marvin Bell’s “32 Statements About Writing Poetry”

Wallace Stevens’ “Adagia”

Voices (bilingual edition), by Antonio Porchia, translated by W. S. Merwyn.Copper Canyon Press, 2003.

The Agony of Flies: Notes and Notations (bilingual edition), by Elias Canetti,translated by H. F. Broch de Rothermann. Noonday Press, 1994.

All Gall Is Divided, by E. M. Cioran, translated by Richard Howard.ArcadePublishing, 1999.

George Murray. Glimpse: Selected Aphorisms. ECW Press, 2010.

1. Epistolary essay. Write letters/emails to yourself. Write back. Repeat as needed.

2. Five-act 1. Tell a story five different ways, from five different perspectives, human and object.

3. Freytag’s Pyramid (Gustav Freytag, Lajos Egri). Write an essay divided into five parts, or acts: Exposition/Premise, Rising Action/Problem, Climax (Turning Point), Falling Action/False Resolution, Dénouement.

4. Captain’s Log (Todd Colby). Write diaristic account of workday, including exact time and place of writing.

5. Chronological Record of My Life (Amy Krouse Rosenthal). Write one sentence about yourself for each year you have lived.

6. Self-Google. Write only with resulting text, editing it down to an essay.

7. “How To” Oral History (Foxfire). Interview your oldest relative. Ask him or her to teach you how to do something: a skill that is no longer needed in our modern age, a cooking recipe, how to ask a girl/boy to a dance. Transcribe/edit using only your subject’s words.

8. Frequently Asked Questions. Write an essay by answering the Frequently Asked Questions of a random website. Take out the questions, or leave them in.

9. Cento Essay. Construct an essay entirely made up of full sentences other than your own. Cite sources at the end. Alternate: Construct essay entirely made up of sentences that are from your own past essays).

10. Recomination: Write a one-word sentence, then a two-word, a three-word, and so on.

11. Recomination 2: Start with a sentence that is one-word long, two-word, etc. Double word count in each successive sentence.

12. Make up your own outline. Write an essay according to that outline. Cut up the outline and throw on floor. Pick up. Use that order as your new outline. Cut and paste corresponding text.

13. Serial Sentences (Bernstein): Select one sentence each from a variety of different books or other sources. Use that to begin each paragraph, and sentences of your own composition. Combine into one paragraph or reorder to produce the most interesting results.

14. Deep listening (Sparrow, Barbara Louise Ungar, Joseph Bailey, et al.) Listen with eyes closed for 10 minutes. Offer account. Repeat as needed.

15. Lipogram 1. Write an essay with no adjectives or adverbs.

16. Lipogram 2 (George Perec). Write an essay that does not use one particular letter.

17. Liponym (Wayne Koestenbaum). Write an essay without one word (examples: the, a, I). Write an essay without one word that is about that word (example: an essay about apples without using the word apple or apples).

18. Univocalic Essay (Christian Bok’s Eunoia). Write an essay that uses only one vowel.

19. Journey Around My Room (Xavier De Maistre). From your bed, look slowly around your room, and write a full page of description (narrative, memory, lists) of at least five objects.

20. Time-Specific (Bernadette Mayer). Write a paragraph at the same exact time every day for an pre-determined assigned number of days.

21. Pictures at an Exhibition (Mussorgsky). Go to an image-filled friend or relative’s house and write a paragraph on each picture, as if scripting a guided tour at a museum. Adopt art criticism-speak as needed.

22. User’s Manual. Write step-by-step, numbered directions to something you have no idea what to do, or a piece of equipment you have no idea how to use. Provide illustrations as needed.

23. Recurring dream/confidence man. Provide a detailed account of a recurring dream. Do not mention that it is a recurring dream.

24. Write an essay with a font/typeface you never use.

25. I cannot/can’t remember (Brainard). Write a list of things you cannot remember from your own life. Provide details of what you cannot remember.

26. Write an essay on only one computer that is not your own.

27. Write an essay with only one hand.

28. Anti-narrative (Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project). Write an essay that is an assemblage of quotations, observations, newspapers, and other published sources, arrange them in categories: some of the ones Benjamin uses are “Fashion,” “Boredom,” “Advertising,” “Prostitution,” and “Theory of Progress.”

29. Numerology. Adopt a numeric system for your essay. Examples: write 10 10-word essays, 20 20-word essays. Write an essay with only one-, two-, three-, or four-syllable words.

30. Star number essay. Write an essay that has the exact word count of star number, which is defined in Wikipedia as “a centered figurate number that represents a centered hexagram, such as the one that Chinese checkers is played on. The nth star number is given by the formula 6n(n – 1) + 1.” The first star numbers are: 1, 13, 37, 73, 121, 181, 253, 337, 433, 541, 661, 793, 937, 1093, 1261, 1441, 1633, 1837, 2053, 2281, 2521, 2773, 3037, 3313, 3601, 3901, 4213, 4537, 4873, 5221, 5581, 5953, 6337, 6733, 7141, 7561, 7993, 8437, 8893, 9361, 9841, 10333, 10837.

31. Prime number essay. Write an essay that has the exact word count of prime number. A number is prime if it is greater than 1 and has no positive divisors except 1 and itself. The first prime numbers are: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 43, 47, 53, 59, 61, 67, 71, 73, 79, 83, 89, 97, 101, 103, 107, 109, 113, 127, 131, 137, 139, 149, 151, 157, 163, 167, 173, 179, 181, 191, 193, 197, 199, 211, 223, 227, 229, 233, 239, 241, 251, 257, 263, 269, 271.

32. Write an essay that can only be hand-written—i.e., with symbols, pictures, collage—and distributed by scanning/Xeroxing.

33. Use terms from Gustavus Miller’s dream dictionary (online; Google the term), and provide your own examples or explanations.

34. Turing Test essay (Alan Turing). Submit yourself to a Turing Test, the first test for artificial intelligence in a computer, by writing your own answers to the various Turing Test questions found online (Google the term “Turing Test questions”).

35. Write your own Profession of Faith.

36. Architectural essay 1. Write an essay that is an architectural “event, by using, in some form or another, Bernard Tschumi’s six concepts for postmodern architecture: defamiliarization, mediated metropolitan shock, destructuring, superimposition, crossprogramming, event. From: Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. “From Space | Action | Movement: Understanding Composition as Architecture.” 5 April 2007.  http://people.clarkson.edu/~johndan/read/architecture/welcome.html target=”_blank”> http://people.clarkson.edu/~johndan/read/architecture/welcome.html

37. Architectural essay 1. Model an essay on webs, nests, burrows, tunnels made by animals.

38. Write an oral history of a week in your life, using interview transcriptions from five people other than yourself.

39. Pillow Book (Sei Shônagon, Murasaki Shikibu). Write a book of sayings, lists, quotations, opinions of others.

40. Fragments (Sappho). Write an essay with the conceit that it has been transcribed from a notebook in which only a fraction of the text is readable/transcribeable.

41. Collaborative Essay. Write an essay that is one word/sentence/paragraph at a time with collaborator(s).

42. Five-Paragraph Essay Writing Roulette. Using standard five-paragraph parallel structure, write five standard academic essays in groups of three or more. Each writer writes a five sentence first paragraph (thesis, support subpoint-1, support subpoint-2, support subpoint-3, conclusion), and passes it on to the writer to his or her right, repeating until finished.

43. Cut-Up Essay (Cage, Burroughs). Write an essay. Cut up into sentences/paragraphs. Throw on floor. Pick up. Re-edit essay according to this new order.

44. Flarf Essay (Sullivan, Degentesh). Type your topic/thesis/idea into Google. Copy and paste the text results into your word processing program, and use only this text for your essay, cutting as needed. Then re-write as needed. (Important: Do not tell anyone you used this method.)

45. Indeterminacy (Cage). Group writes topics, assigns to another writer or is randomly picked from a hat.

46. Indeterminacy 2 (John Cage, Lars Von Trier). Have someone else write your essay, with yourself as author of record.

47. Each writer writes a sentence that must be included in another student’s essay. It must make sense, and be used verbatim.

48. Find five words you have never used, and use them in the essay.

49. Walk to work: write a sentence at each corner.

50. Sampling: Find a phrase from another work of art. Repeat in various forms in text.

51. Scientific article outline #1

TITLE:
BACKGROUND:
AIM:
METHOD:
RESULTS:
CONCLUSION:

52. Scientific article outline #2

BACKGROUND:
MATERIALS & METHODS:
RESULTS:
FIGURE 1:
FIGURE 2:
FIGURE 3:
FIGURE 4:
TABLE 1:
TABLE 2:
DISCUSSION:
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:
REFERENCES:

53. Forced Epiphany. Think of problem: Pose question. Then, go somewhere outside. Take notes of your surrounding. Then, have an epiphany. Attempt to answer your question (“Maybe the answer to ____ is ____” or “Maybe the question is really _____”).

54. Aphorism Essay: Write 25 aphorism on your subject or idea.

Inspired, stolen, and sometimes adapted from:
Bernstein, Charles. “EXPERIMENTS.” 19 May 2008. http://writing.upenn.edu/bernstein/experiments.html.
Mayer, Bernadette. “Bernadette Mayer’s List of Journal Ideas”; “Bernadette Mayer’s Writing Experiments.” 19 May 2008. http://writing.upenn.edu/library/Mayer-Bernadette_Experiments.html.

Definition of Objective Correlative. From: M.H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms.

The Objective Correlative: An Overview

T.S. Eliot writes in his essay “Hamlet and His Problems” that the “only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an “objective correlative”; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.”[1]

I love the idea of an Objective Correlative more for than its practical applications, if any, or whether or not it’s particularly relevant to Hamlet or understanding works of art.  To me, it offers a writer the opportunity to organize his or her ideas, to prioritize them, and to recognize that it is an emotion or representation of an emotion that we’re trying to get across in the first place.  The idea of the Objective Correlative sets out, Eliseo Vivas writes, to explain how a writer “organizes his sensibility through the act of expression.” Writing is not, to this writer, a directionless expression.  The idea of objectifying an emotion is not a new one; it is also largely unprovable or, better put, un-enactable.  Rather, the objective correlative is more of a philosophical stance by which, for our purposes, we can understand how an essay comes into being.

Where an Essay Like This Could Start

Let’s suppose, for the time being, that there are two starting points for an essay. The first point derives from an aspect of our own interior lives; let’s call these this emotions or feelings.  We write about a state of being—from William Hazlitt’s “On Hating,” to Virginia Woolf’s “On Being Ill,” to Philip Lopate’s “Against Joie de Vivre”—and center on specific emotions or feelings to bear this out.  Our exploration of feelings prompts us to seek out particular examples–objects, if you will. Or, as Eliot puts it, chains of events, people, objects, and creatures—to illustrate and question and “evoke” these ideas.  We could call this set of starting points our ideas for personal-autobiographical essays.

A second starting point draws directly from an object, or set of objects, work or works of art or artist, event or chain of events, or situation, which the essayist in turn questions, ponders, essays, and tries out new ideas on.  For an example of what we could call the critical or aesthetic essay, we can begin with popular culture riffs from Lester Bangs’ canonical rock criticism on Lou Reed and James Taylor. As American Movie Critics: An Anthology from the Silents Until Now (edited by Philip Lopate, The Library of America, 2007) bears out, so much great film criticism starts, obviously, with a review of a film, and expands to address a larger aesthetic or societal issue or some cultural Zeitgeist.  We can move on up the criticism-philosophy chain: Susan Sontag‘s reflections on Leni Riefenstahl, Charles Baudelaire’s reviews of the Paris Salons laid down the ground work for what would become Modernism.

The idea of the Objective Correlative, the very coining of it, comes out of Modernist project of, as Jürgen Habermas writes, “develop[ing] objective science, universal morality and law, and autonomous art according to their inner logic.” This assignment draws its inspiration and power from the reactions, both subtle and militant, of the postmodern with the modern.

The Assignment

First, find an Objective Correlative, your own “set of objects,” as your subject.  This can be the fruits from a life-long obsession, a literal object you carry around that correlates to a larger part of your being, or an event from your life that lingers in your memory.

There are a couple of modus operandi bubbling up from this assignment, ones that may or may not help you if they are explained and you may or may not want to think about.  One is that we are using one idea from Modernism—i.e., the objective correlative—and putting it through a series of Postmodern drills and techniques.  Another is that much of what Postmodernism draws from, as its name implies, is a reaction to and rejection of many of the traits of high modernism, and by essaying between these two ideas should come up with some decent writing or at least starting-off points.

Some examples of Objective Correlatives: A cultural phenomenon, product, work (TV show, painting, movie, recording, material thing, event in history, cultural trend or fad) that translates into a particular emotion for you.  Some more: an action (riding the bus) or memory that triggers the memory of a particular object, idea, notion or long-time theory you have had.

Second, write an essay that integrates the following Postmodern qualities, that puts your objective correlative through these Postmodern hoops.  You may write an essay that features the results of these prompts paragraph by paragraph, numbered point by numbered point; you are encouraged to try these prompts out and see which ones work for your essay.

Writing Prompt: Tell us about your Objective Correlative.  Is this a private or personal object, or is it a public or even famous one? Give us the history of your OC.

Writing Prompt: Is there an emblematic story you can tell us that illustrate how this Object correlates to an emotion or feeling on your part?  Can you think of a hypothetical story based in fact that might help us picture your Objective Correlative, perhaps a composite of real events?

Writing Prompt: Using your Objective Correlative as your guide, study your object intently.  Look at it from all angles—before, during, and after a “situation,” Eliot calls it; above, beneath, and inside a literal “set of objects.”  Write down your observations. Describe your object it as precisely as you can using no metaphor at all—employ Ezra Pound’s very Modernist dictum that “the natural object is always the adequate symbol” as your guide.

Some More Prompts that Might Help You

IDEA: Modernism “quotes,” even “samples,” low culture—think Mahler quoting German folk songs, Eliot using Alexandrine rhyming couplets in “The Wasteland,”  Postmodernism blurs the line between high and low culture, integrates and incorporates low culture elements into the main strand of the work, and thus blur the distinction entirely.

Writing Prompt: Find, posit, cite, high culture incarnations of your objective correlative and a low culture incarnation.  Write a passage in such a way that both are standing side by side, with no judgment on the quality of highness of lowness.

IDEA: Modernism, in many ways, is an extension of the notion of what Matthew Arnold calls “high seriousness.” Postmodernism, on the other hand, doesn’t take itself too seriously.

IDEA: Modernism promotes a criticism alongside writing and art.  It sees these as two autonomous entities.  Postmodernism often attempts to do both at the same time—art and criticism.  A postmodern work often engages in a theoretical discourse side by side with the exegesis of one’s subject.  In everyday parlance, it “goes meta” on itself, places the way the writer is addressing its subject into the work of art itself, be it the ways in which knowledge of subject is acquired (epistemological concerns) or the ways the writer addresses the very existence of the self and subject (ontological concerns).

Writing Prompt: After you examine your Objective Correlative from all direct angles—physically, historically, etymologically—address how it is you got to know this object (epistemology), and how it came into being (ontology), as well as what others think or might think of it (various critical schools of thought).

IDEA: Postmodernism employs pastiche—i.e., a mimicking other styles, other voices, other art forms even—and integrates into the main strand of the work.  This is done out of nostalgia or as an homage. as opposed to drawing attention to it.  This is not to be confused with “parody,” which uses often mimicry to ridicule/make fun of the style and voice.

Writing Prompts: Write in another’s voice, perhaps embodying the voice of a great thinker.  Write in a style not your own to illustrate or expand on idea of yours.  Provide illustrations, drawings, photos, tables.

IDEA: the Death of Subject/Death of the Author. This might be hard to implement consciously.  In broadest of strokes: One hallmark of Modernism is the notion of an artist’s distinct voice, and art as a distinct product of the self.  This Cult of the Genius reaches its apex only as a reaction to previous epochs, where the subjects of art goes outside the traditional subjects that supported artists—churches, political leaders, middle class patrons. Modernism, for its part, put into question that experience and style is unique and was a way to improve one’s self.  Postmodernism blurs the line between an art’s subject and everyday life, between genius and just being a regular person.  In other words, a Postmodernist upends the Modernist’s claim for—or importance of—a personal, individual style.

Writing Prompts: Give your draft to or switch computer seats with someone else.  Have them look at a paragraph of yours and assign them to write another paragraph. Google a term relevant to your essay and integrate a version of that text into your piece.  Employ OuLiPo techniques of text generation.

IDEA: Collage and montage. “Collage,” critic Gregory L. Ulmer writes, “is the single most revolutionary formal innovation in artistic representation to occur in our century.”

Why?  First there is the old breakdown of the relationship between or among the sign, signifier and signified. Meaning is put into question even when a word is swapped out with another.  Two, by using collage and montage, new and unexpected meanings are achieved.

Writing Prompts: Cut up your draft and re-assemble, submitting to the new order you have come up with. Translate and retranslate sections of your text or all of it, and use the new syntax and words. Write your essay in a segmented/collage/montage/mosaic fashion to allow separate sections to resonate as distinct units.

IDEA: Postmodernism often employs parataxis, or uses a paratactic strategy.  Grammatically and stylistically, it is the placing of elements—paragraphs, sentences, utterances, words—side by side without transitions, coordinating phrases or words. Or explanations.  In film, it’s used all the time with jump-cuts and split-screens.

IDEA: Disrupt reader’s expectations in temporality—i.e., time.  Time-dependent works—music pieces, poetry, some narrative texts such as drama—are broken down.

IDEAS: “All conceptual writing is allegorical writing,” writes Vanessa Place and Robert Fitterman in their book Notes on Conceptualisms. Symbolism  derives from an idea, whereas allegory builds to an idea. One could say, without too much controversy, that in modernism uses symbols, where images build or “coagulate.” Modernism produces objects, ‘well-wrought urns’ which, drawing from its goals of am autonomous, stand-alone work of art, demand study of the art-object itself. New Criticism, an adjunct to or byproduct of Modernism, doesn’t so much discount studying the history of the work-object or author as much as relegating it to a lesser, secondary endeavor than the study of the work inside its own world.

In postmodernist work, the materials—backstory, author’s life, history, cultural context–are not only as important as the work itself; it is part of it.  The postmodernist manipulates and/or appropriates its materials (random examples: Richard Prince’s Marlboro Man, Kenneth Goldsmith’s Soliloquy, Flarf poetry, redactive text projects, Jonathan Safran Foer’s Tree of Codes). It could be said that postmodern writing demands some foreknowledge regarding that which is manipulated and what is the significance, implications or otherwise thought-out-ed-ness of said appropriation/manipulation. This depends in no small part on what is allegorized or pastiched. In allegorical/conceptual/postmodern writing, Place/Fitterman write, images are “jettisoned,” the writing is “necessarily inconsistent, containing elaborations, recursions, sub-metaphors, fictive conceits, projections, and guisings that combine/recombine both to create the allegorical whole.” The complete postmodern work is necessarily incomplete or at least incomplete-looking.

Writing prompts: Ban all use of symbols. Stop alluding to; rather,determine what is being allegorized, then  ’manipulate/break up/introduce fictive conceit’ your text-essay away from that which is allegorized. In other words, don’t tell people what you’re talking about or mean; rather, historicize (pastiche, polyvocal technique), fragment (numerology, chance, cut-ups) and otherwise interrogate your subect. Appropriate a text, manipulate/reconfigure it, and integrate it into your work.

Adapted from and inspired by:

Perelman, Bob.  “Parataxis and Narrative: The New Sentence in Theory and Practice.” American Literature 65(2): 1993, 313-324.

Jameson, Fredric.  “Postmodernism and Consumer Society.” In: The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture.  Hal Foster, ed.  Seattle, WA: Bay Press, 1983.

Ulmer, Gregory L. “The Object of Post-Criticism.” In: The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture.  Hal Foster, ed.  Seattle, WA: Bay Press, 1983.

[1] A sidebar: Eliot was not the first person to coin the phrase objective correlative, but he is certainly credited with making it popular.  The exact origin is subject to some debate in the critical literature, and variants of the term go back to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Byron, Husserl, Santayana, Nietzsche, and Walter Pater.  The painter Washington Allston seems to be the consensus choice first coiner in one of his lectures on art in the mid-19th Century, if not the first person to explain it the best.

Flower Painting IV by Joe Brainard.

“I Remember” exercise.

This is the simplest and also the most powerful of all writing prompts.

It is this: write pages of sentences that begin with the phrase “I Remember.” This assignment is based on a book of the same name by Joe Brainard, an artist and writer, who collected his “I Remember”s in several editions, and are available in book form.

Some “I Remember”s are very short, others a paragraph long.

Information and excerpts from Joe Brainard

Short article on Brainard at The Academy of American Poets.

An excerpt from Frieze Magazine.

A couple more here.

Some audio recordings of readings by Joe Brainard at PennSound (scroll down for I Remember excerpts).

From ArtVoice, “Remember Brainard.”

A lesson plan from Teachers & Writers Collaborative based on the “I Remember” excercise.

Other writers’ Joe Brainard imitations and homages

D.W. Lichtenberg‘s “I Remember” piece.

Jon Emil Vincent‘s “I heart Joe Brainard, always will.”

Shane Allison‘s “I Remember, Joe.” Also his book called I Remember.

One might think that memoir is all about what’s going on in one person’s head–his or her memory, life, accomplishments–but it’s equally about the surrounding world, the search for connections, however tenuous or even illogical–to other people.  This assignment may seem simple and straightforward, but don’t be mistaken: it’s essential you include the outside world, outside objects and incidents; it’s essential you include other’s stories with the your own.

Take a current news story and fine your own angle or place in that story, either your place in the story or the story’s place or context in your own experience. Your job would be to find your own angle, your own story, to add to this story. Mention the story and the incident, but not academically so; the purpose of this assignment or strategy is to find your way into the world and vice versa.

Let’s say the story is a local one and involved an accident in a parking lot where a pedestrian was hit by a car.

First things first: Were you there? Do you know or know of the actors in the story? What are they like?

Can you tell another story that can add to our understanding of this one?

Has there been debates or controversy about speeding in the lot?

Have you yourself been pulled over by local police?

Is there a history or mythology to this parking lot?

How does car culture affect or not affect how people ride around the lot? Do people cruise around, showing off their wheels?

Does it remind you of your own high school parking lot?

Lastly and perhaps most importantly: Does this trigger any other memory that, on the surface at least, looks unrelated to this perhaps small-scale story, but will take efforts by you to explain?

As we read and then discuss Stephen Elliott’s The Adderall Diaries over the next couple of weeks, I thought it would be useful for us all to write a memoir piece.  Here are the specifications, we might call it, for your first assignment:

– No fewer than three and no more than five pages, double-spaced;

– Name the document correctly;

– Place in our shared Drop Box folder by September 5, 10am;

– The piece is memoir-based; that is to say, broadly, that you are writing from your own life; we’ll talk about the implications of memoir and the difference between memoir and, say, personal essay as the weeks go on.

– Don’t worry about having a beginning, middle, and and end.

– Include at least one exchange of quoted dialogue, with one of the speakers being you/the “I.” Working with dialogue on a mechanical and craft level is one of the things I’d like to talk about next week.  The following links here on this site should provide some help:

Working with dialogue and narration

Formatting dialogue: some links with tips

Writing a scene from the ground up

Dialogue in scenes: Some thoughts on format, what’s left out, and those pesky adverbs

– Include a least one digression that takes us out of the action; this can be an essay, rant, manifesto, flashback, tangent, musing (Judith Barrington, in your Readings folder), leap (Robert Bly); search for the word “tangent” over there on the right for some posts if you are stuck regarding where and what to write in your digression.

The most important thing is we start writing and we start talking about our writing with each other, all the while reading some great examples of our genres.  Email me if you have any questions.

This assignment is inspired by the “Twenty Little Poetry Projects” exercise, invented by Jim Simmerman, and appears in The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises from Poets Who Teach, edited by Robin Behn and Chase Twitchell (HarperCollins, 1992. It’s a famous writing prompt project, as these things go, and many poets have tried their hand at it.  So many that there was an anthology of Twenty Little Poetry Project poems.

The only real “rule” Jim Simmerman sets in his explanation of the project is that you open the work with the first project and close with the last; otherwise, use the projects in whatever order you like.  Check them off as you move along, as in a scavenger hunt.  But do use all 20 projects.  Repeat some if you want.  Unless it makes sense for the piece, do not make a numbered list.  Instead, try to craft this into sentences, paragraphs, narration and dialogue.

1. Begin by completing one of the following phrases: “This is about ______”; “This will be about ______”; “Tomorrow will be ______”; “They say that”; “Consider this: ______”
2. Describe an event from the past in the present tense in 3-4 sentences.
3. Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the writing.
4. Offer commentary on the event in #2 in the past tense, again with three sentences; begin with: “Back then, I didn’t realize ______” or “We didn’t know that ______” or “I will later find out that ______.”
5. Mention the name of a religion or faith other than the one you were brought up in, or your ancestors were brought up in, in one of the other sentences.
6. Also: perhaps in another sentence, tell us how this religion or faith would address project #4.
7. Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of place.
8. Contradict what you say in #1 with a qualifier; try something like “Maybe this is really about ______”; “Perhaps tomorrow ______”; “Other people say that ______”; “Maybe what I’m really talking about ______” or “I also remember this: ______.”
9. Make a statement about a recent advance in one of the hard or pure sciences (physics, computer science, geology, chemistry, biology) and make it relate it to one of your your other sentences.
10. Use a word (slang?) that you never usually use in a sentence that makes sense in the context of another sentence or in another sentence entirely.
11. Use an example of an ad hominem fallacy (an example: “That’s easy for me/you/her, him, them to say, because ______”).
12. Create a composite character of two or more people (relatives, friends, co-workers, teachers).  Give that character a role in the essay.  Use a real name of one of the compositees, or assign another. He or she could appear or play a role in any part of the essay.
13. Describe a childhood memory in three simple sentences (i.e., subject-verb-object).
14. WWJDS? WWSFDS? WWMEBGDS? What would Jesus Christ do/say?/What would Sigmund Freud do/say? What Would My Ex-Boyfriend or –Girlfriend Do/Say? Answer one of these questions without asking this question, preferably without mentioning the names.
15. Refer to yourself by a real nickname someone has given you in the third person.
16. Make a prediction about a specific year in the future that you think is bold.
17. Interview someone to comment on #3, #4, #8, #9, #14. Use a direct quote or a block quote or dialogue exchange.
18. Using Google or another internet search engine, look up an important word or term from your your essay and either search for the latest news item (Google News) or the “I Feel Lucky” feature. Describe the results without saying you used this feature.
19. Mention any current world leader by name in any context anywhere in the essay.
20. Close the essay with an image or a statement that “echoes” 1, 4, 6, 8, 16, 17.