A name, then a departure
Write it their way · 15 minutes · Published
Read this first
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851). Project Gutenberg #2701
The prompt
Begin with a narrator who tells us what to call them, in three words or fewer, then explains in a single winding sentence why they are about to leave somewhere, with a parenthetical shrug about dates. Keep the passage's movement: short command, then long drift. The place and the reason are yours.
Set a timer for 15 minutes.
Short version · 10 minutes
In ten minutes, write the three-word introduction and the one long sentence of departure, nothing more.
The move
Write it their way. Take a passage you admire and write something else in its exact shape: same syntax, same rhythm, same movement, another subject.
Tags: imitation, rhythm and voice.
In a group
A way to run it with a writing group:
Blind vote. The texts are gathered without names, read and voted on. Then the writers make themselves known and the choices are discussed.
Where the page goes next
Scrin is a home where pages grow into books: you keep writing, from an untitled line to a chapter, and Scrin keeps the rest.