Creative Writing Drills
2 minutes
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Black smoke billowed out from...
Black smoke billowed out from the chimney; a dark, round figure appeared in front of me. It was standing on two feet like a human, yet it was huge, hairy and seemed to carry something heavy on its back. Perhaps it was Santa?
1 minute
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The Bell Rang…
The bell rang suddenly and broke the ominous silence. The cold chills run down the girl's spine. As she slowly took a step back, this strange creature took one step toward her. She had a feeling that she shouldn't be here. A thousand thoughts stormed through her head as to why she came here in the first place.
"I have to get out of here!" She said in a trembling voice as she headed toward the front door.
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You found your bike in…
She found her bike lying in the bushes, covered in leaves and scratches. It was her only chance to escape from this thing as fast as possible.
30 seconds
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The man swung a fist…
The man swung a fist and hit the ground with so much anger that you could hear the road cracking behind the girl.
5 minutes
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A character is sleepless…
The road seemed to be endless and was a predicament of a sleepless night for Eliza. Despite being alone among the shadows of the night, she was not afraid of moving further and further away from the house. It was almost like she knew that the outside was the safest place.
30 seconds
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What happens if you press the magic button?...
Will it destroy the world just like in the movies?
10 minutes
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The clock stopped at 10:30…
· The clock stopped at 10:30…
The darkness surrounding the cordial felt endless and the cold breeze gave Annie goosebumps.
It felt like a scene from a horror movie. However, she questioned the possibility of anything living in the shadows.
Annie whispered to herself “Monsters aren’t real right?”
She didn’t seem so sure about what’s real anymore and what could happen on this specific night of 31st of October when the dead rise from their graves. It was Annie all alone facing complete darkness; a choice between waiting for something living in these shadows to catch her or make a run through the noir. Suddenly the ominous noise of a grind of an old wooden floor came from behind her.
The fear paralyzed the girl. Hearing the noises Annie felt her body slowly getting numb and refusing to take any more steps towards the corridor. She could feel a cold breeze down her neck and her hair slowly rising like something was standing right behind her.
Annie smiled with tears in her eyes and said” Well it looks like that’s the end of hide and seek game”.
3 minutes
· It was moving… but how?
A toy that had no batteries or any source of power was walking slowly towards the girl’s bed. She was excited to see her favourite teddy full of life and ready to play. However, something didn’t feel right. She thought “It was moving…but how?”.
20 seconds
· What was the man running from?
The road was surrounded in a heavy fog. Although it was almost impossible to see through it, I could clearly see a silhouette of a man heading towards me, but what was the mam running from?
· She revved up the bike and…
She revved up the bike and rode as fast as she could.
10 minutes
· The pen was running out of ink…
Connor knew he hasn’t got much time left as the poison already took a tool on his body. With his last bit pf strength her crawled up to the desk and grabbed some paper and pen to write his last words. In his last moments he thought pf nothing more but warning his dear friend Lily of the murderer who poisoned him, and so he wrote:
Dear Lily
I hope you will find this letter before anyone else does and expose the person who did this. I found the murderer, but it is to late for me to do anything about it. He was an impostor among our group of friends all along! You must warn ithers before it’s too late! Stop J…
Suddenly, everything went silent and Connors body felt too heavy to keep writing. In his last moments he hoped that Lily and others will stay safe.
He closed his eyes and patiently waited for all the pain the poison cased to his organs to go away. With every second things were becoming more peaceful and relaxed. Although his vision became blurry, he could see someone walking into the room. “Lily?”. A small pair of soft hands creased his cheeks. “Everything will be alright”.
1 minute
I’m running late…
I quickly grabbed the car keys form my bed side table, a hot cup of coffee that I spilled on my had “Ouch!”. I’m running late again.
An alarm rang at the zoo…
I couldn’t find my friend Jess in the crown of people blocking the exit. Everyone seemed to be heading out to safety. Everyone except Jess. She was standing next to the cage with tigers and feeding them chicken nuggets? I couldn’t believe my eyes.
30 seconds
When the dog barked….
When the dog barked at me, I took a step back and rethink my life choices.
What did u find under the sofa cushion?
A lot of mysterious things.
15 minutes chose 1
If I hadn’t looked at the window at that exact moment, I would never believe. The Santa’s sledge was right on the top of the roof of Maddie’s house. There was no time to waste. I grabbed my phone, rang Maddie, and hoped that she will pick up. Just as I thought she answered I heard her voicemail “ Please leave a message after the …”. It was very unusual, she never misses any calls as she always scrolling something on her phone.
I decided to put my red, winter jacket and check if she is all right. Her house was just across the road, what could go wrong? The streets looked empty and completely silent. I didn’t find it unusual; it was middle of the night, and everyone was in a deep sleep.
I flashed the torch of the phone and looked inside the house through the front window. The window was reflecting the torch and make it hard so see through. “Click”. The torch went off and then someone appeared in the living room, by the fireplace. “It’s him! A real Santa!”.
At this very moment I knew I need to get to Maddie’s room. The only way to get to the room on first floor was through the balcony. I swiftly climbed up and knocked quietly onto the glass door. I pulled down the handle and the balcony door were open. When I looked inside Maddie’s room the bed was empty. “Where are you, Maddie?”. I saw her phone lying on the bed still on. I looked onto the bright screen, and it looked like she was trying to send me a message. The message said: Someone is in my house, but it’s not a Santa. I read the message again confused.
Suddenly a sound of the bells came from outside, I looked at the window and I couldn’t believe it. It was the Santa’s sledge on the roof top once again. “It looked like he took Maddie, but why? Did she manage to capture him?”
Thoughts
At first, I found this writing exercise a bit stressful considering the time limits. I was more afraid of not fitting into the time limit rather than creating a bad idea. In the end, I realised it was easier for me to come up with ideas for the subject I was familiar with. For example, I don’t write or draw about violence or action a lot, so when I came across the “The man swung a fist” starting sentence point my mind went completely blank.
Overall, I enjoyed this little exercise as it helps in practicing generating ideas for various stories.
For one of the lessons we were asked to prepare 2 stories. One that we liked and hated.
The story I like
The story I like it’s a lore of the game called Genshin impact. It tells us a story about twin siblings who have travelled across countless worlds but unfortunately have been separated from each other by an unknown god. Since they’ve been separated in Teyvat, that’s where the journey begins. The game lets us experience the struggle of looking for the twin sibling first-hand by making their playable characters. In the game a player is considered a traveller who is looking for their twin by searching for clues, helping the locals and travelling across different nations.
The reason why I like this story is that it teaches us about the history and traditions of each place the traveller visits. It lets us discover the secrets of Teyvat such as thousands of years old gods secretly living among humans or the evil conspiracy hiding in the shadows.
I also like the pace of the story progressing. It introduces new events and characters by using the interest curve method. The unique pattern behind this is letting the player go through the struggle of defeating the final boss opponent, which afterwards we always are rewarded with a celebration and making new friends.
The story I hate
The story I hate it’s called “My Deepest Secret” and I first came across it on Webtoon mobile app.
The story starts by introducing the main character Emma as the luckiest girl to have the most handsome boyfriend. This happiness doesn’t last long as strange events take place in Emma’s life. It seems that her perfect boyfriend is a psychopath that is overprotective of his girlfriend. He staring to physically harm people around Emma, anyone who talks to her or even looks in her direction. Emma being such a sweet innocent character made me fall in love with her. As a reader, I was truly hoping that she will get out of this toxic relationship and seek a better life.
I went through quite a shock when I found out that Emma’s boyfriend is a part of her imagination about a guy she murdered and all the people that got harmed in the process were her doing. I felt lied to.
I hate this story because it made me like the character which after it made me truly hate it. It felt like breaking up a relationship. Hating someone and loving at the same time. I never expected Emma to become insane and commit all sorts of crimes. Compared to the story I liked this one had too much foreshadowing. The first story was also better build in terms of slowly introducing new antagonists into the story while the story I hate just dropped this heavy baggage in form of plot twist of protagonist being the bad character out of nowhere. In the end it was really hard to accept the new reality of the story.
Interest Curve
One of the new things we learnt was interest curves in the stories. Based on the story we know, we were asked to create a diagram showing how the tension was built. I used the story from the game I talked about in “The Story I like” to show how the tension was built by introducing new friendly characters, which leads to helping them fight a boss in the game to release this tension there is always celebration afterwards for the player to be able to relax and process what happened in the story.
3 Story breakdown
During the classes, we were asked to break down popular stories like “Beaty and the beast” or “Iron Man” into beginning, middle and end. It was supposed to help us understand what a good beginning, middle and end of the story looks like. For example, a good beginning should introduce, character and place. A good middle is a good place to introduce any other characters as well as the goals and should be focused on where the story will end. The end of the story can be the result of the conflict in the story or the result of action taken throughout the story. The text overall should make the reader experience different feelings.
Memory about ice cream, an animal, friend and 4 panel break down
This small task required us to break down our memories of things like the memory of an ice cream, an animal or a friend into points. In the end, one of these stories was chosen to turn into a 4 pane story.
Descriptive writing (Pantsing)
The task was to use adjectives that described particular objects to form a sentence that was meant to be extended with each attempt. To do that, I had to think of how would I describe an object to a person who has never seen or heard about it. I think this mindset helped me to learn how to describe things to the audience better.
Vague sentences
In this exercise, we learnt how to avoid vagueness by considering the questions such as why, where, when, what and how. The important part of it was using sensory language by describing the sense of touch, sight, sound or taste.
Scrambled script activity
The discovery writing is where I started to struggle because of the number of random prompts that have been given to us. I found it hard and stressful to come up with ideas that had to be very descriptive in a short time. It made me start to cross over a lot of my ideas to then change them to be more descriptive or to create an idea that was easier to describe for me.
I don't think the idea of calling two different characters A and B in a longer piece of writing worked for me personally. Half the way through I started mixing up characters and forgetting which one did what in the story.
Group task- Write episode about Simpsons
The group task was to create a new episode of a popular show The Simpsons. It was hard to come up with something new when this popular series already had plenty of episodes about anything possible. I and my group decided to target a side character rather than a family member because all of them have plenty of episodes about each of them.
We decided to talk about the statue from the Simpsons, and it's the struggle of being in many episodes yet not having any friends.
Comic-Script-Comic
We were asked to swap the script we wrote based on the comic we read and illustrate it. I never read the comic from the script I received, so it was a complete guess of how to picture each panel. It ended up looking much like the actual comic, which made me very confident with my skills as a comic book artist. However, when it came to the script I wrote for my classmate I received a lot of complaints. I didn't think that the panels should be too descriptive in terms of the point of view and I wanted to leave it up to the artist. I've been told that I didn't describe the characters or panels very well. In the end, you could clearly tell the characters as to who was what because I clearly stated whenever they had wings or horns.
After the harsh critique from my classmate, I decided that clearly many things needs to be improved in my scriptwriting. I knew I need to be better at describing different panel setups, so I looked into how it should look like. I discovered that artists use words like mid-shot or full body shot like in photography to instruct the illustrators how to picture the panels. I decided to give it a try in my 4-page script.
The original story
The script I received
The script I wrote based on a comic book I brought in
Read, Review, Improve
The page I based it of
Thumbnails
The task was to practice drawing comics from various scripts. Some of these were complicated to imagine in terms of point of view. For example, in the first script, we were asked to draw the character from outside the ship in the window and the next panel zoom in on the eye. It was hard for me to draw a smooth transition from inside to outside and then zoom in to be able to tell that the character is on the ship and what's happening to it.
I learnt that there are scripts that are more detailed and tell you the exact position of each panel but there are writers who prefer to give the artist more freedom to place them around how they want.
I think personally I would write a planned and detailed piece of script to make my drawing process easier. However, whenever writing scripts for another artist I would give them this extra freedom to position the panels how they want.
4 Page Script
Page 1
This page has one horizontal panel at the very top of the page, followed by a portrait and horizontal panel in the middle. At the very bottom of the page, there are three portrait panels.
Panel 1
Establishing shot on the dark road lightens up with a slight glare of lamp posts along the side. Christmas decorations play songs quietly and light up the houses. Black smoke billows out from one of the chimneys.
Panel 2
Low angle shot. A little girl with long, golden hair dressed in pyjamas with a gigngerbread man walks down the stairs carefully to avoid any noises made by old wooden stairs.
Panel 3
Close-up shot on a fireplace. The sparkly ash and grey smoke exploded out of the fireplace like something heavy just went down the chimney.
SFX: Sssswisssh
Panel 4
Close up shot. A dark figure with glowing emerald green eyes emerges from the darkness of the smoke and slowly falling ashes. A quiet, growling whisper called out the girl's name.
The monster- Aaannniieee.
Panel 5
A mid shot from the hip up. Innocent, little girl is wriggling her hands in agitation as she is wondering who or what it may be?
Annie: Santa?
Panel 6
Extreme close-up of a girl's blue eye. A reflection of a silhouette of the creature that turns out not to be Santa but a horrible monster that kidnaps children appears in her pupil.
Page 2
This page starts with a portrait panel on the very top followed by a horizintal panel. Underneath there are two small portrait panels and one horizontal. The page ends with two panels on the very bottom.
Panel 1
Close up shot of the floor showing the girl slowly taking a few steps back towards the door behind her.
Panel 2
Low angle shot. The girl is running outside the house with a terrified face expresion.
Panel 3
Close up panel on the girl’s hand picking her old kids bike covered in leafs and scratches.
Panel 4
A mid shot from the hip down showing the girl getting on the bike about to leave in a hurry. View of the long road ahead of her in the background.
Panel 5
A mid shot from the hip down showing a girl on the bike with sweat and tears on her face. Her house is far away in the background behind her.
Panel 6
Low angle shot. A large foot of a monster standing in the way in the foreground. In the background, a girl suddenly presses a break to stop.
Panel 7
Close up on the girl's face screaming with her mouth wide open, anger and frustration in her eyes.
Annie: WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!
Page 3
Splash page.
Full body shot. This tall monster owns a pair of large, black horns sticking out of his head. He has a slim waist and wide shoulders covered with a long black cloak having fur around the neck. His hand appears to be very wrinkly, with long sharp nails pointing out towards his index finger. On the other hand, he is holding a large bundle.
Page 4
The page starts with a horizontal panel followed by a portrait panel. In the middle there is a single horizontal panel. The bottom of the page starts with a portrait panel and ends with a longer horizontal panel.
Panel 1
Close up shot, birds point of view on the monster’s hand reaching into his bundle for something that looks like a whip.
Panel 2
A mid shot from the hip up showing the monster swinging his long whip in the air.
Panel 3
Low angle shot. The monster wraps his whip around the girl’s ankle and drags her toward him. Annie is crying and screaming on the ground. She is trying to hold onto the floor by scraping the road with her fingernails.
Annie: I DIDN’T STEAL THE CHOCOLATE SANTA!
IT WASN’T ME!
I SWEAR!
Panel 4
Close up shot of the bundle. From the point of view of the monster. He ties the bundle with the girl inside it.
Panel 5
Establishing shot of the town.The silhouettes of houses under the green night sky full of stars. The monster jumps from one roof to another with his bundle on his back.
For my 4-page script, I was inspired by the first writing drill we got. The start of the sentence "Black smoke billowed out from..." made me think about Christmas. Since we are close to Christmas I wanted to create a little Christmas horror story about what happens to naughty children.
The next task was to create a flow chart and turn the 4-page script into at least a 16-page script. At first, it seems almost impossible to turn such a short story into 16 pages. However, making different outcomes helped me to fill out this space.
I tried to create various choices for the reader of what they could do in this situation and give them possible outcomes on particular pages. Each of the outcomes represented what would happen if the person got caught by the monster and the overall task was for the reader to try and escape to get to the end of the story.
The flow chart helped me to keep track of the character making decisions and taking actions I had a problem with one of the writing tasks with A and B named characters.
Flowchart
17 Page Script
Page 1
Panel 1
Establishing shot on the dark road lightens up with a slight glare of lamp posts along the side. Christmas decorations play songs quietly and light up the houses. Black smoke billows out from one of the chimneys.
At the bottom of panel 4 it should say “Go to page 2” and panel 5 “Go to page 3” to direct the reader to continuation of the story after making a choice.
Panel 2
Mid shot on a girl waking up in the bed and hearing the noise.
Panel 3
Close up shot of a girl rubbing her eyes after waking up.
Annie- What’s that noise
Panel 4
This panel shows one of the choices the reader can make in order to continue the story. The panel features a full shot of a girl getting out of her bed.
Annie- Should I check it out?
Panel 5
This is another choice showing the girl deciding to stay in bed and continue sleeping.
Annie- I’m going back to sleep
Page 2
Panel 1
Full body shot on a small girl trying to quietly walk down the stairs.
Panel 2
Full body shot of a girl trying to hide behind the stair rails.
Panel 3
Full body shot of a monster noticing the little girl hiding on the stairs and pointing at her with his hand.
Page 3
Panel 1
Full body shot on a girl walking down the stairs.
Panel 2
Full body shot, view from behind the girl a sleepy girl standing in front of a monster thinking about what should she do?
Page 4
This page features 2 panels as different choices reader can make in order to move on in the story. At the bottom of both panels it should say “Go to page 5” as this choice doesn’t affect the story.
Panel 1
Mid shot of the girl starring at the monster in front of her to see what is he going to do?
Panel 2
A mid shot from the hip up. Innocent, little girl is wriggling her hands in agitation as she is wondering who or what it may be?
Annie- Santa?
Page 5
Splash page.
Full body shot. This tall monster owns a pair of large, black horns sticking out of his head. He has a slim waist and wide shoulders covered with a long black cloak having fur around the neck. His hand appears to be very wrinkly, with long sharp nails pointing out towards his index finger. On the other hand, he is holding a large bundle.
Page 6
This page features 2 panels representing a choice that can be made again. Under the first panel it should say “Go to page 7” and under the second panel “Go to page 8”.
Panel 1
Low angle shot. The girl is running outside the house with a terrified face expression.
Speech- RUN!
Panel 2
Full body shot of girl considering taking a bike.
Speech-Take a bike
Page 7
Splash page.
A huge, evil monster throwing the girl into his bundle.
Speech underneath- Too slow, you got caught.
Page 8
A splash page of a girl on the bike happy to escape the monster. Her house is far away in the background behind her.
Speech underneath- You successfully escaped, but…
Page 9
Splash page. A monster blocking the way. View from behind the girl on a bike.
Annie- Oh no
Page 10
Panel 1
Mid shot of the girl with angry face expression, holding tight onto the bike.
Annie-The monster is blocking the road.
Panel 2
View from a distance the monster standing in the middle of the way waiting for the girl to capture her.
Panel 3
This panel features one of the two choices. I show the girl trying to run over the monster with her bike in order to escape. Underneath this panel it should say “Go to page 11”.
Panel 4
The second choice featuring a girl with an angry face expression and her hands in the air, yelling at the monster. Underneath the panel it should say “Ask him what he wants?”
Annie-…
Page 11
Panel 1
A full body shot on a girl riding on her bike very fast towards us.
Annie- You leave me no choice.
Panel 2
A full body shot of a monster waiting for the girl to get closer.
Panel 3
A close up on a monster’s face smiling as it makes his job easier to capture the girl this way.
Page 12
Splash Page.
Full body image of a monster standing on the road with bis huge bundle open and waiting for the girls to ride into it. Annie trying to stop the bike with her feet on the ground.
Annie- Noooo
Page 13
Splash page. An old bundle in a shape of a child trying to struggle to get out. A monster’s hand tying the bundle up.
Page 14
Splash page. A monster carries a heavy bundle on his back.
Speech at the bottom of the page- You disappeared and no one ever heard about you again.
Page 15
Panel 1
Close up on a girl screaming with her mouth wide open.
Annie- What do you want from me?
Panel 2
The monster swinging his long whip in the air.
Panel 3
Close up on the girl’s foot getting caught by the whip.
Panel 4
Close up on the girl’s face panicking.
Annie- No, no, no, no
Panel 5
This panel got 2 speech bubbles to show to available choices. The panel shows the girl being dragged on the ground towards the monster.
Speech bubble 1- Lie and say you’re innocent. (Underneath “Go to page 17”)
Speech bubble 2- Come up with an excuse. (Underneath “Go to page 16”)
Page 16
Panel 1
Mid shot of a monster smiling and pulling his whip towards him.
Panel 2
The girl lying on the floor and crying.
Annie- I’m innocent.
On the bottom of this panel- The monster did not believe you. You have been caught.
Page 17
Panel 1
Mid shot on the girl pointing towards a house in the distance with a big smile on her face.
Annie- It wasn’t me, it was my friend who did it.
Panel 2
Close up shot on the monster rethinking his actions.
Monster- Hmmm
Panel 3
Close up on the monster being confused.
Monster- Perhaps I was mistaken.
Mid shot of the girl looking at the monster who is heading towards the hose that the girl pointed out.
Annie- Looks like it worked.
17 page comic
Notes from artist talk- Kevin Gunstone
In one of the talks with an artist we had with Kevin Gunstone, he mentioned how you should be prepared as an artist to work on a variety of comics. There will be a lot of ups and downs, and things to correct as the companies are very demanding.
I think all the writing exercises we had gave me a little taste of how is it to work with various stories. I'm not the best at writing stories, but I think writing scripts it's something I want to practice because it interests me, and I feel like it's something I can be good at one day.