No place named
One rule first · 20 minutes · Published
Read this first
On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment (1866). Translated by Constance Garnett, 1914. Project Gutenberg #2554
The prompt
Set your rule first and keep it to the end: no place is ever named, only its initial and a dash, and no character gets a name at all. Write a man or a woman leaving a room on a hot evening and walking somewhere they dread. If you want a second rule, give the heat a part in every paragraph.
Set a timer for 20 minutes.
Short version · 10 minutes
In ten minutes, write the walk from the door to the bridge under the no-names rule.
The move
One rule first. Set a formal rule before the first sentence and hold to it to the end.
Tags: constraint and structure.
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.