Story Telling Crash Course - Session Ten: More Constraints: Write Without Using Negations

dragosroua (74)in #challenge30 • 9 years ago

Welcome to the tenth session of our story telling crash course. With this one, we're reaching the "two thirds" threshold, which means we have only 5 sessions left until the end of the course. I already start to miss these posts. It was a very enjoyable exercise to write these sessions, to follow up with those who took on the assignments and to award the symbolic prize.

Anyway, back to today's topic: write without using negations. The aim of this activity is to get into a positively focused mindset.

Writing without using negations is more difficult than you think. My girlfriend was recently into a story telling course and I remember that one of her assignments was exactly that, only the course also provided a specially crafted editor, which, every time you would write a negation would have blocked the keyboard. And I think there was also an audible alert, something like: "nope, can't do that". It gets annoying after a while.

Writing without negations also helps to create contrast or polarization in a more creative way. If you can't use negations to define the "other" way, you're forced to define it in a different way. It's not "right" versus "wrong", or "do" versus "don't", but rather "this" versus "that", without any polarization attached.

So, your assignment is to write a post, on whatever topic you want, without using any form of negation. Don't forget to tag it `challenge30` and `story`, so I can find it on Steemit, but it wouldn't hurt to leave me a comment too, with a link to the article. I will personally review all the articles and award a 1 SBD symbolic prize to the winner. You have 24 hours.

Looking forward to read your stories.

Links to previous sessions:

I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.

You can also vote for me as a Steemit witness here:
https://steemit.com/~witnesses

#story #writing #minnowsunite

9 years ago in #challenge30 by dragosroua (74)

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creatr (70) 9 years ago

Challenge accepted. Here is my most positive Steemit article ever so far, once again squeezing it in just inside the deadline... ;)

"Meet Someone Who Is Absolutely, Positively, Unequivocally, YES!"

Thank you for yet another brain-bending exercise!

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mgaft1 (67) 9 years ago

Can you explain why do you even need it? Most of the conversations, especially arguments contain a negation.
“I am going to jump off the bridge.”
“Oh, no, you don’t”
“Yes, I will.”
“Oh, no, you don’t”
“You’ll see.”
“I am not going to see anything…”

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dragosroua (74) 9 years ago

This is an exercise about how to depict reality without using explicit negations. It forces you to find alternative ways to describe a context or a situation.

It's works the same way like going to the gym: you don't need to lift weights in your daily life, but lifting them at the gym makes you fitter.

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mgaft1 (67) 9 years ago (edited)

Yes, you can do this in an article or if some flow of consciousness story. However, if you won't include negation into a dialog you age going to distort the reality. For an exercise it's ok, but for a real life story it's not applicable.

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dragosroua (74) 9 years ago

Agree. Like I said, this is an exercise. You don't do weight lifting on your way to the job, in the subway or at the grocery shop, that will also create a strange reality.

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