Research Exercise

[john]

Research Exercise

This exercise is about finding some useful basic ingredients to work with.

1) Find some news reports online, read some newspapers and magazines. Select stories that interest you.

2) Now go through each selected story one by one:

• Write down keywords that represent the gist of the article
• Write down the characteristics of the people in those stories that grab your attention
• Write down phrases that make you want to find out more, phrases that make you ask questions.
• Look at the photographs and other images included in the selected news story, then write down a description of the story the images tell, especially in the context of the accompanying text.

For example:

• Who are the people you’re looking at?
• What are their individual stories?
• What is the location?
• What is the emotion being displayed overall in the image?
• What are the emotions of any individuals within the picture?

3) Look for one story from the selected stories and the material you have generated that captures your imagination, then develop that idea further:

• write down words and phrases associated with the selected story, it's characters, images and emotions

4) Keep thinking about the topic until your next writing session.

[Dee]

Hi

This sounds like a really good exercise, something that I will definately try.

Thanks

dee