Writing Exercises

Author's Note: On this page I am putting on all of my writing exercises. The ones with red words means those words we had to put in our story.

Writing Exercise 1

I'm running. And I'm not going to stop. At least not until I find myself some time to stop and think about this all. My life took a crazy twist lately, and I'm not sure this is one I can get out of. Left, right, left, right, I weave my way through the trees, trying desperately to lose the beast that was behind me. I turn around and scream.

How did I get in this forest, running away from an unimaginable beast? I hope you believe me on this one, because I'm not sure I can believe it myself.

12 years. I lived a perfectly normal life for 12 years.  And I liked it. There was nothing too strange or different about my life. Until  Uncle Joe turned up.  I came home from school to see a slightly large man standing in my living room,  a complete stranger. 

"Johnny! Long time, no see. Literally. The last time I saw you, you were a wee baby. How's it been since I left?" The strange man said. Now this day became a little stranger. This man was talking to me as if he knew me. One thing was for certain though, I didn't know him.

"Mom, who is this?" I asked tentatively, worried about the answer I was going to receive.

"That's okay if you don't remember me. I'm you Uncle Joe," The stranger, apparently my Uncle Joe, answered for me. I looked to my mom for confirmation. All I got was a slight nod from her. This was extremely odd. Usually my mother was exuberant when we had company over, preparing food, welcoming them and talking to them as if they were family, which they sometimes were. But today she was quiet, standing secluded in the kitchen. I didn't know what to say, or do. So I did nothing.

Uncle Joe moved in with us and never talked about moving out. Life seemed to become a little more normal after my first encounter with him, but normal is definitely not a word to described Uncle Joe. His idea of fun was hunting, seems normal, but Uncle Joe liked to hunt fish. Seriously, he hunted fish. He walked around a lake, pond, stream or whatever he could find, shooting his gun wildly into the water, laughing his head off. Now do you believe me when I say Uncle Joe is not normal. I think the right word to describe him would be crazy. He had probably had more crazy hobbies, but after the fish hunting experience, I stopped following him on his strange expeditions. Life was like this all the way through junior high, and junior year in high school.

Then, in the middle of July before my senior year of high school, my life took its strangest turn yet. I returned that day from my summer job, manning the cash register at the local grocery store, to find Uncle Joe missing. Not only was Uncle Joe missing, there was no sign he had ever been there.  Our guest room, the room that he was staying was neat and tidy, two words Uncle Joe never used, or tried to follow. When I asked my mother about it that night, she blew it off and changed the subject, so I decided not to worry about it, figuring that Uncle Joe had finally found a place to stay by himself, and had cleaned up his room as a token of gratitude. I went up stairs, hopped into bed and fell into a deep, refreshing sleep. I woke up and the nightmare began.

At the foot of my bead was a giant black bear, with completely white eyes. I'm serious, it's like the bear had no pupils.  The strangest thing was what was behind the bear. There were trees. I was in a forest with a black bear looming over the foot of my bed. That's when I decided to get out of my bed and bolt away, hoping that the bear wouldn't chase me. That's where I was as I ducked and weaved through the trees, turned around, and screamed. The bear had caught up. I slowly start to walk backwards, hoping the bear got off my scent, and fall. I look down hoping to gather my bearings and get ready for the impact on the ground. I see nothing. I keep falling, and falling, and falling, and falling, and falling, and falling, and smack against the ground, which knocks me out cold. When I wake up, I look up, and see my father. 

Writing Exercise 2

Robert walked slowly into the dentist's office, scared and bewildered by all of the ominous machinery. He wished that he would've remembered to brush his teeth the few times he was too lazy to do it, or to eat less candy, because now he had something that he completely dreaded. A cavity. He didn't know what was going to happen at the dentist's. Robert was so unenthusiastic, that his mom asked him if anything was wrong. "Nope. I'm fine," Robert replied with a fake smile on his face. He hoped his mother couldn't see through it, even though he knew she would.

Robert sat down in the waiting room, scared out of his skin. He looked up, and saw that he was sitting under a painting of a dog. Robert didn't think it was made well, but he didn't know a lot about art. Just as he was about to explode from nervous energy, Robert got called in to the office. The nice lady led him to the room, and shut the door. Robert felt as if he was about to faint. The lady sat him down and happily started to check his teeth. Robert felt as if he were in prison. That's when the lady found it.

"Oh my, is that a colorful tooth," the lady exclaimed, "that looks like a cavity. I'll have to tell Doctor Hurt." Now Robert was terrified. Why had his mother taken him to this dentist named Doctor Hurt. Now Robert wished they had just stayed at the local dentist, instead of traveling all the way to New York City. He wondered what Doctor Hurt would do to him. Would he cut into his tooth and make it start oozing red blood?

He was about to find out. A tall man in what looked like a lab coat stepped into the room. He was so deathly pale, it looked he started on the housetop, and jumped off.

"Hello. You must be Robert. I'm Doctor Hurt. Now let's take a look at that cavity of yours," he said. Doctor Hurt sat down next to Robert in the chair, asked Robert to open his mouth wide, and when he saw the cavity he exclaimed, "We can get that out very quickly." Wow, Robert thought,  this might not be so bad. The dentist got a tool that looked like a drill and said, "You might feel a pinch, but after that you'll feel nothing." Doctor Hurt brought the drill into Robert's mouth, and Robert felt the slight pinch, but nothing after that.

Writing Exercise 3

The balloon rose higher and higher into the sky as the wind picked up and began to push the entire basket full of people for off course. Suddenly, several sandbags fell off one side, tipping the basket, and sending the balloon drifting even faster over a forest. "JUMP!" one of the passengers yelled. As if on cue, everybody jumped out of the balloon, free falling towards a dark and dangerous forest.  Right before the innocent people were about to smack onto the tree line, a streak appeared under them, and they were whisked away.

Upon waking, the people looked around and saw that they were on the ground in the forest. "I have no clue where we are," a man, named Joe, said honestly. Everybody nodded there heads in agreement. Somebody looked up and exclaimed, "Look, its our balloon!". Everybody cheered and then went swimming in the nearby river to wash, and to have fun. Joe had some interesting thoughts as they were getting out of the river. Who was the man that had told them to jump? Why had he done that? What was that streak below them as they were following? Involuntarily, he spoke his thoughts. This caused an uproar among the people. They wanted to have some answers about why they ended up in this strange forest. Pretty soon, fights had started. People were literally beating each other up, looking for answers. "People, people," Joe said smoothly, trying to calm the crowd, "This is no matter to fight over. I say we should head out of this forest, back to civilization, and then worry about what happened." This calmed the crowd down.

Later, the sun was setting, and Joe settled under a tree, looking for a place to rest. Just then, an Italian man approached him.

"If there is anything you need done, I promise I will do it. It has been my dream to survive somewhere other than civilization, and this is probably the best chance I'll ever get." Joe quickly shook the man's hand, and drifted off to sleep. When he woke up, Joe noticed that there was nobody around, except for the Italian man sleeping a few feet away from him. Joe ran around, frantically looking for the people that he had been with just only a few hours ago. He noticed some strange things. There were some trees that appeared to have been there since before the dinosaurs had been extinct.  He was startled by the Italian man, who had approached him from behind him, and put his hand on Joe's shoulder. "I need to tell you, my name is Eugene Johnson. I changed it to an American name after coming over from Italy," the Italian man said, "I then settled in Texas, and raised a family. I had been taking a vacation and I ended up on the hot air balloon." Joe looked to his left, and saw he was standing beside a cabbage. He hastily picked it up, hungry from not having eaten anything for days, only to discover it had a repulsive smell to it. He immediately threw it into the river, hoping to get away from it as soon as possible.  Eugene then jumped in after the cabbage and never came up again. Suddenly, an arrow sliced through the air. It was the last thing Joe ever saw.

Writing Exercise 4

As soon as the elephants left the center ring, Henry leaned forward to see which circus act would come out next in this strangest circus he had ever seen. So far there were bicycle-riding bears, lions jumping into pools of flaming water, and seals who tossed bowling pins to one  another, balanced on the tips of their noses.

Henry leaned so far forward, he almost fell out of his seat when the performer appeared… his greatest fear became realized. It was the clowns! Henry jumped out of his seat, determined to leave as soon as possible, but his mother pulled him back down. She scolded him for disrupting the act. Henry shrunk into his chair, hoping the clowns didn't come near him. Why did his mother have to buy seats in the front row? Henry wished that he could switch seats with his mother, for the plump woman next to him was nearly squishing him.

Suddenly, Henry looked up, and his heart started beating way too fast. A clown was slowly walking over to where he was sitting, and Henry was scared to death. As the clown got closer, Henry became even more fidgety. After what seemed like several lifetimes, the clown was standing right in front of Henry. What happened next would haunt Henry for the rest of his life. The clown reached down, grabbed him, and in one quick motion, threw him down his throat. To Henry it felt as if he were getting washed away while he was in a sink. He kept falling, and falling, until THUD! He hit the ground. Henry was very confused. He was in the middle of a city. With no color. Everything was gray and drab, even the clothes that the people were wearing. Henry looked down and noticed he was wearing the same dull clothes too. He looked left and right, then looked quickly back to the left. Something had caught his eye. A man was running towards him, with his eyes pierced on Henry. Before Henry could react, the man was upon him. He felt a great shock go through his body, and the world went black.

Upon waking, Henry looked up and saw that he was lying next to a busy street, near a sign that said, "Welcome to Vermont". He followed the road to a nearby city, and he approached a gym. Henry didn't know why he went there, but he felt he had to. He went inside and immediately saw a strange man who was yelling out things during the racquetball game that was going on in the court next to him. The man motioned for Henry to come over, and Henry went to talk to the strange man. He motioned for Henry to watch the game, and he did. The players were extremely competitive. One player played very good, but his opponent wasn't. You could clearly tell who was superior. Henry figured the lesser player had 1/1,000,000 of a chance to win, that's how much he was outmatched. During a break, one of the players, the superior player, came over to Henry. Henry didn't know what was happening until it was too late. The player lifted his racquet, and Henry blacked out once again.

When he woke up, Henry saw that he flying over a rainbow. He soon realized that he was not over the rainbow, but on it. Up ahead he saw a unicorn that had wings. When Henry reached the unicorn, it surprised him by saying "Hello Henry, my name is Ronald, but my friends call me Preposterous Ronald. Would you like to take a ride?" Unintelligently, Henry accepted. He hopped up on Preposterous Ronald's back, and away they went. They were soaring over the world, although Henry didn't know if it was his world or some other world that he was traveling to. Suddenly, a flaming object shot out of the sky, heading directly towards them. "Sorry dude, this is where the ride ends," Preposterous Ronald said to Henry, and tipped over, thus causing Henry to let go, and start his free-fall. Looking to his right, he noticed that a purple iguana was falling next to him. It moved over so that it was by Henry, and whacked him with his tail. For the third time that day, or at least Henry thought it was one day, he blacked out.

As he woke up, Henry noticed that he was sitting up in his bed at home. Autumn leaves were falling on him. Henry looked up and saw that there was no roof. He was in a forest. Looking straight ahead, he saw a huge bear standing at the foot of his bed.