3-Stage Rocket of Fiction

The Stanford University online creative writing program is already more impactful than I could have imagined. It’s my first week! This week in class, we did an amazing exercise in both creativity and in learning to let go of your work, to distance yourself as a writer from your position of ownership and protection. The exercise was to produce a piece of fiction in 3 stages from three different writers–not working together but serially. The first writer creates a character. The second writer takes that character sketch and writes a scene involving the character. The third writer writes a complete book synopsis from the character sketch and the scene. Some amazing books came out of this exercise! And, I only cared a little bit for a little while about what people did with my work at other stages.