Cheltenham Stories

For this week, I want you to do an exercise I found in a book. It’s called Lost Loves.

You have to write about someone you have lost, not necessarily because they died. It’s just that they were part of your life and now they aren’t.

Write about a time when you were together. This can be a fleeting moment, a particular incident or a longer period of time. 

Then imagine a scene when you come back together. Represent this as a conversation. What do you say to each other? 

Please don’t make anything up for this one. It’s supposed to be factual. 

Next time, May 24, we will take this autobiographical material and turn it into a short story in the third person, using all the techniques of fiction. 

The prompt for this week is ‘Water’. Stories and poems equally acceptable.

This week I thought we could attempt some kind of self-portrait. By that I mean a physical description and what that suggests about your temperament; then some stuff about your good points and your bad points; then something about the way you behaved in a specific situation. If you want to weave these into a story, so much the better.

The task this week is to write a piece of historical fiction. Any era is acceptable. The opening phrase should be ‘Come in’ or equivalent.

The task this week was to write a ghost story.

The idea this week was to write a monologue suitable to be performed by a middle-aged male actor.

The prompt for this week was ‘Self-isolation’. All manner of fiction or non-fiction pieces were welcome.

The prompt this week was ‘Aliens’, which people were entitled to interpret in any way that suited them.

This week we wrote a fictional piece based on a newspaper story. The story, taken from the Gloucestershire Echo, concerned a court case about a street crime in Gloucester.

This week we are writing something based upon a bit of original research. After some casting around, we decided our subject would be ‘Tudor and Stuart architecture’.