Fiction Writing

Writing Exercise: Rising Action

Using the character’s strength and weakness to drive the plot

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Note: This piece is assignment 1 for Coursera’s Creative Writing: The Craft of Plot.

I invite you to take on this assignment prompt yourself and publish it with Better Writing after requesting to be added as a writer.

Oh, and do let me know what you liked, didn’t like, and how I can improve.

Assignement 1

Write a scene of 250–350 words featuring a character with one concrete want (a table, a moose, a toothbrush, anything physical is fine!) and one weakness. Use these two features to drive the action of the plot. Set up the story where every other sentence is a rising action. To help you come up with rising actions, use one word from the following list of twelve words in each sentence that has a rising action. In other words: Write your first sentence introducing your character. Make the next sentence a rising action using one of the following twelve words. Write your third sentence, which may introduce the weakness, then write your fourth sentence with a rising action that includes one of the…