Two Writing Exercises

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Harbour in Arbroath


Two exercises: Someone is waiting for a train.They have a suitcase that contains an object they wish to conceal. 

1 What’s your name? 

2 What do you do for a living? 

3 Where do you live? 

4 Do you have a family? If so, who are they? 

5 What do you like to watch on TV? 

6 What do you like to eat? 

7 What are you wearing? 

8 There’s something you’ve always wanted to do-what is it? 

9 There’s somewhere you’ve always wanted to go -where is it? 

10 There’s something you’ve never told anyone before–what is it?

Stella feels awkward in her long, flowery dress and sturdy shoes. Every woman on the platform wears smart trousers or a pencil skirt. And shoes! Heels the size of trees! She is easy to spot. She would love to have a job. Feel comfortable with all those smart people around her, knowing where to go and what to do. She has barely enough money for a ticket to Glasgow and she hasn’t got a clue what to do when she gets there.  Search for her parents or her sister, probably. A lot can happen in ten years; they could have moved. And would they take her in? The last time she saw them was the day she left for the Farm and it wasn’t a happy farewell.

              ‘Why can’t you be happy for me?’ she’d shouted. ‘Finally there is something I really care about!’

              She had slammed the door and got into the car waiting for her, with her Brothers and Sisters in the Farm. Her new life had begun, she thought.

Exercise 2 Taking the train staton character you created in the earlier exercise, you are now going to place them in a different setting. 

Stella gazes out of the window.  The vegetable plot is looking good: carrots coming up, peppery radishes and crispy lettuce ready to be harvested. Jocelyn, the dedicated Sister-cook, is planning a special meal for Farm Day. But where anyone else would see the fertile soil and the seedlings peeking out, Stella sees endless mud; mud caked in her shoes, hands and nails so dirty she can’t get them clean, even after soaking them in the hot suds. Is that all there is to it? she thinks. From the communal sitting room fragments of a song of praise leak into the kitchen. Is it? Endless work, hard and physical, punctuated only by Sunday Rest and Worship Day and the occasional Farm Day.

It hadn’t escaped her that all of the work was carried out by the Sisters. Brothers were deemed to fragile and spiritual to do any of that.

Exercises: Reardon, J. and Campbell, S. (2019) ‘Writing stories’. A111: Discovering the arts and humanities. Available at: https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=1417554 (Accessed: 30 April 2023).





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