Rewriting prompt: One-syllable edits

Start with a copy of a bit of fiction that you've already written — 200–300 words ought to do it. Rewrite the section using only one-syllable words. Proper nouns are exempt from this shortening, of course; if your story is about Julie from Schenectady, it can still be about her.

Rewriting prompt: Killing Four

Start with something you've written, 300-500 words. It doesn't even have to be anything you consider final. Go through it closely and rewrite it as and where needed so it contains no four-letter words. I don't mean that metaphorically; I'm not simply asking you to eliminate profanity. Get rid of all words containing exactly four letters.

Rewriting prompt: You're a poet and don't recognize the fact

Rewrite a scene — yours or someone else's — as a rhyming poem. Couplets, quatrains, sonnets, whatever — just not haiku, okay?

Rewriting prompt: Another opinion

Today's rewriting prompt is short and imageless because I've been spending all my free time preparing for my presentation at the 2015 annual conference of the American Copy Editors Society, otherwise known as ACES 2015. If you're going to be there, make sure you find me and say hello.

Rewriting prompt: A new ending for an old story

We've all read novels whose endings have left us, to be nice about it, disappointed. (Stephen King's The Stand jumps right to mind.) You know how you wanted it to end, so why not make it end that way? Pick up the story where it starts to go egg-shaped and rewrite it to your liking.

Rewriting prompt: Indulge in grandiloquence

In today's rewriting prompt, I ask you to do the opposite of good editing.

Start with about 300 or 400 words — fiction or essay, it doesn't matter. Rewrite it using the most multisyllabic, sesquipedalian verbiage you can muster. Stretch both the language and yourself.

Rewriting prompt: A Moody Rewrite

Find a scene or story that has a strong mood to it and rewrite it to give it an opposite mood. Make a somber scene light-hearted, or a scary scene funny. Or at least fun.

Rewriting prompt: Not to Be

In a blog editing tip way back in September 2013, I wrote that "No word in the English language is as insidious as is is." What I meant is that the forms of to be, whether as helping verbs or linking verbs, can become like table salt: you can use it with almost anything, but too much of it can make the whole thing unpalatable.

That might be a bad metaphor.

Rewriting Prompt: Trying These Times

You've seen this done countless times by well-known authors. You've even seen it done and not known that you've seen it. It's been done to entire novels, but for now, maybe just focus on a scene.

Rewriting Prompt: You First

Start with a scene or short story (your own or someone else's) that has a fair amount of action in it. It doesn't have to be intense action, but the main character has to do some thing and have things done to her. Rewrite it in second person, present tense.

Rewriting Prompt the First

If you dropped in on Monday, you saw the first of my weekly writing prompts. Today, I launch another feature: REwriting prompts.