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Category: Serious

Writing a Story Using the Literal Tax Code

Writing a Story Using the Literal Tax Code

Published by Scott on April 18, 2018

For the last stream’s exercise, in honor of U.S. tax day, we tried a new exercise: writing a story that starts with a random sentence from the Form 1040 Instructions.

We generated some random numbers and got three sentences from the 107-page document. All three of them were equally robotic and miserable, but that’s exactly what we signed up for.

Chat voted for one of them, and we started our story with it. Then, halfway through, we got another sentence from the document.

I’d say given those restrictions, we did pretty awesome. But you can read here and decide for yourself: (text from the Instructions is in bold)

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Writing About Our Greatest Fears – Writing Stream Recap

Writing About Our Greatest Fears – Writing Stream Recap

Published by Scott on March 17, 2018

For the last stream’s exercise, we I decided to try a new kind of exercise: writing our greatest fear.

To start, we brainstormed a bunch of fears, then chat voted on the one we’d write (“social situations” was the winner). We then wrote three opening sentences for three different social fears, and in the end, “chatting on Twitch” was the winner.

For the exercise we wrote for 30 minutes about a character going through that fear, then we stopped, wrote the sentence “Then I decided not to be afraid anymore,” and had the character overcome it.

It’s a different exercise than we usually do, but it was a lot of fun. Fear can be a great driving force for a character, and this was no exception.

Here’s what we came up with:

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Writing a GUT-PUNCHING short story – Writing Stream Recap

Writing a GUT-PUNCHING short story – Writing Stream Recap

Published by Scott on February 24, 2018

For the exercise portion of the last stream, we wrote an entry to a contest that one of our viewers (Nicole Dark) is holding. The prompt is simple: write a gut-punching story in 1,500 words or less.

After brainstorming a bunch of ideas we chat, we finally settled on one and started writing. I was expecting only to do about 500 words, but I got so into it we ended up about 100 shy of the limit!

I really love how the story came together. It delivers not only one, but several punches straight to the gut. And the last one is a doozy.

You can read it here:

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