How about September as scene-writing month?

I’ve gotten attached to this pattern of a monthly series in the noon (Eastern) time slot. It started in April with A Story Idea Each Day for a Month. In May, it was Movies You Made month. June, 30 Days of Screenplays. July, Movie Story types. And this month it has been Scene Description Spotlight.

So here we are looking at September and my gut tells me we should have a go at something that arose in our group conversation a few months back: What about a series of scene-writing exercises? For example:

* Write a scene that establishes a location.

* Write an action scene with no dialogue.

* Take a ‘talking heads’ scene and put it on its feet.

* Write a scene that builds toward a cliffhanger.

The idea being that each day (Mon-Fri) everyone is invited to write a scene and post it for comment. Why might my creative gut be feeling all warm and gushy about this prospect? Because soon, people who are committed to Go On Your Own Quest will start writing script pages. What better way to warm up to that than by writing a bunch of scenes. And if you’re not going to be pounding out a first draft starting in October, you can still benefit from a series of exercises in scene-writing.

So what ideas do you have for scene-writing exercises? We can even use prompts like this:

* Write a scene where a woman seduces a man only talking about baseball.

* Write a scene involving a gun.

* Write a scene using voiceover narration.

Let’s see if we can come up with 21 great ideas for scene-writing exercises (that’s how many Monday through Fridays there are in September).

What suggestions do you have?

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