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UNIT 1 CREATIVE WRITING

Lesson 1 Creative Writing: An Introduction

Activity 1: A World Without Words

Taking off from the premise of the “word,” immerse yourself in a constructed reality of a
world without words. What would it be like? What form of communication would arise? Write a
paragraph on this imagined situation and compare your answers with those of your classmates.

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Reading Activity 1: Smelling the Difference

1. You may be gone but certain smells you had on you are still present today-your mother's
carefully selected fabric softener that made your shirt smell of lavender, freshly laundered
and then pressed. The damp earth after a heavy rain, that mix of acacia tree leaves and
wet grass, the dreamy scent of possibility. Your skin alive, and though hard to describe,
pheromones that when breathed, made one mad with desires.

2. Odours in general, like tastes, are due to mixture: for anything which is uncompounded
has no smell, just as it has no taste: wherefore simple substances have no smell, such as
water air and fire: on the other hand earth is the only elementary substance which has a
smell, or at least it has one to a greater extent than the others, because it is of a more
composite character than they. – Excerpt from "Concerning Odours" by Theophrastus

Discussion Questions

1. Which of the two did you enjoy more? Why?

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2. What is the main purpose of each paragraph?

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3. Which of the excerpts would you say is literary? What are the characteristics of this text
that make it creative?
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4. In your own words, come up with one to sentences describing the sense of smell.
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5. What rhetorical mode (e.g., definition, description, or narration) is most commonly used
when asked to define or describe an abstract concept? Share your sentence/s with a group
of five to seven students and talk about the different approaches you used.
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6. Google the word “smell” and look for at least three other texts on this subject. What can
you classify under literary, academic, scientific, or journalistic? Provide at least three
examples.
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7. Aside from words, what other ways can you use to describe the sense of smell?
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Activity 2: Follow the Scent/Sundan mo ang bango!

Write one (1) paragraph about a smell or smells that reminds you of something from the past. It
can be about a perfume or a food. Make your output as creative as you can.

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Lesson 2 Being A Writer

Activity 1: We have all encountered days where we really cannot get the inspiration or drive to
write, especially if it is a requirement we do not enjoy. List the top ten reasons why you do not
find writing enjoyable and compare them with one another.

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Follow-Up Questions:
1. How can you overcome these hindrances?
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2. Why are some people paralyzed with fear when it comes to writing?
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Reading Activity 1 A Writer is a Reader

Excerpts from Virginia Woolf’s diary and observe her own struggles while writing To the
Lighthouse:

One thing in considering my state of mind now, seems to me beyond dispute; that I have, at last,
bored down into my oil well, and can’t scribble fast enough to bring it all to the surface. I have
now at least 6 stories welling up in me, and feel, at last, that I can coin all my thoughts into
words. Not but what an infinite number of problems remain; but I have never felt this rush and
urgency before… Now suppose I might become one of the interesting – I will not say great—but
interesting novelists? Oddly, for all my vanity, I have not until now had much faith in my novels,
or thought them my own expression.
Th e truth is that writing is the profound pleasure and being read the superficial.

I have made a very quick and flourishing attack on To the Lighthouse, all the same – 22 pages
straight off in less than a fortnight. I am still crawling and easily enfeebled, but if I could once
get up steam again, I believe I could spin it off with infinite relish. Think what a labour the first
pages of Dalloway were! Each word distilled by a relentless clutch on my brain.

Discussion Questions:
 1. How did Woolf view the act of writing? What was her attitude toward working on her
novel?
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2. What struggles did she face while writing?

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3. What is the tone of this piece? What do you notice about its sentence construction and
syntax?
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Activity 2: Choose a topic below and write a personal experience about it.

1. Your earliest childhood memory

2. Your favorite body part
3. Continue this opening line: “It was a dark and stormy night…”
4. If you could have a superpower, what would it be?
5. Look back to the first time you fell in love or had a crush. What were those initial
feelings like?
6. Think of ways you can earn money for yourself even as a student.
7. Do you have a favorite word? Explain what you like about this word aside from what it
means.
8. Discuss the concept of good and evil. Do they really exist?
9. Write about an ugly reality of life such as war or hatred, but find beauty in it.
10. Who is your personal hero?

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Lesson 3 Language
Reading Activity 1

Home-Coming
Léonie Adams - 1899-1988

When I stepped homeward to my hill,

   Dusk went before with quiet tread;
The bare laced branches of the trees
   Were as a mist about its head.

Upon its leaf-brown breast the rocks

   Like great grey sheep lay silentwise,
Between the birch trees’ gleaming arms,
   The faint stars trembled in the skies.

The white brook met me half-way up,

   And laughed as one that knew me well,
To whose more clear than crystal voice
   The frost had joined a crystal spell.

The skies lay like pale-watered deep,

   Dusk ran before me to its strand
And cloudily leaned forth to touch
   The moon’s slow wonder with her hand.

Discussion Questions:

1. Identify the poem’s adjectives such as “quiet” and “leaf-brown”. What happens to the
poem if you delete the adjectives from the poem? How do these contribute to the
images used by the poet?

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2. Now, look for the verbs. Examine what verbs already provide an image. Would you
say these are precise and appropriate? How do you say so?

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3. Rewrite a stanza of the poem using current or contemporary diction. What happens to
the poem? Is the effect still the same? What happens to the meaning or content of the
poem?

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Lesson 4 Sensory Experience

Activity 1: A Necessary Blindness

Go to an area where there is a concentration of sound. This could be as near as the
outside of your classroom or as far as a mall. Close your eyes and focus on what you
hear. By writing a paragraph, describe what you hear. What is the noise like? Too loud?
Soft? Are there voices? High? Low? Can you describe the pitch? Do the sounds go
together or not? How would you describe these sounds individually? How would you
describe them altogether?

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Reading Activity 1
 Preludes
BY T. S. ELIOT

The winter evening settles down

With smell of steaks in passageways.

Six o’clock.

The burnt-out ends of smoky days.

And now a gusty shower wraps

The grimy scraps

Of withered leaves about your feet

And newspapers from vacant lots;

The showers beat

On broken blinds and chimney-pots,

And at the corner of the street

A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.

And then the lighting of the lamps.

Discussion Questions:

1. Imagine the scene Eliot describes. Which details most vividly capture your attention?

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2. What is the overall mood evoked by the images?

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3. What words contribute to the attitude of the speaker toward his subject?

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4. What image is conveyed by “The burnt-out ends of smoky days”?

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5. What do you make of the poem’s conclusion? Does the speakers’ tone change from
what it was in the beginning?

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Application: Let’s Volt In!

Using all the things that you have learned from this semester, write a 4-stanza poem by choosing
one of the prompts to inspire you:

1. Describe extreme sadness using the sense of smell.

2. Use the sense of taste to refer to a cloudless sky.
3. What does silence look like?

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