Two of the 10 Commandments for writers as printed in Writer’s Digest
March ’96 are:
#1. Put Thy Work first—not the audience or market
#4. Honour Thy Readers (i.e. Put 'em first, too;)
Keeping in mind these 2 commandments, write about a character's
motivation--it could even be your own. Think about just one of your
own passions/goals/desires/
fictitious person—e.g., the immoral motivator of a villain, if you so
desire…the ambitions of a Koch Bros., par example. Or the family pet,
pet ghost, pet rock or the shackled lover in the loft, as the case may
be.
This Assignment must be 900-1500 words. Not a word more! This is
counting all the connective tissue:, ‘in’, ‘or’ , ‘this’, 'and', etc..
Put your word count on the top of your piece. This will ensure
verbal economy and precision. Think of each word as costing you $5.
You must keep your readers in mind the whole time while you are writing,
for you will be passing your piece to someone else who will read it to
us all.
This way, we will all hear our own writing as our readers would read
it. (Also, we'd each get the same amount of air space and time.)
It’ll also give us an idea if we are doing our best at getting our
ideas, our characters, etc. across to others, while still making it
interesting for most audiences, because we'll each be our own
audience, too. Hearing our own words spoken by someone else will give
each of us some idea of what we have to do to make our writing more
readable and interesting, don't you think?.
Have fun!
