Send us anything you've written!

Welcome to the Creative Writing Forum! This forum was created to facilitate writers getting quick and useful feedback on any and all types of creative writing. Looking below you can either submit something unique and original not based on a prompt via the first assignment, or you can follow one of the prompts given below (which will be changing periodically) and follow those prompts. To submit a piece, simply click submit under the piece you are submitting and then copy-paste your work into the box. All submitted writings will be reviewed by Writing Intensive Tutors at Drexel University and returned as quickly as possible. We at the Writing Forum look forward to reading all of your work!

Take Five

Writers don’t wait for big events to happen to start writing. They take the everyday occurrences and make them into fiction. For example, instead of writing about an ordinary meeting between two friends, you might turn this into a story about two enemies having an argument. Instead of losing homework, your story might turn into finding a fifty-dollar bill. The fun part about turning your life into fiction is that you can make whatever you want happen.

Take five minutes and try writing a short short story about something that you did today. Look around you, take in your surroundings, but instead of writing about what’s there, write the opposite of what you saw, heard, felt, or thought. To get started, take some notes. List about 5 observations you noticed. Then flip them into their opposites. After you’ve done that, write your five-minute story. Of course, your five-minute story doesn’t have to take place in a hallway. You can place it anywhere you’ve been today. Here are some examples:

• A perfect bus trip becomes a bus crash
• A rainy day becomes a picnic at the park between two people in love
• A glass of milk becomes black coffee without sugar
• Dry toast becomes angel’s food cake
• A ticking clock becomes a fire alarm
• A locked locker becomes a cage in a zoo
• A peanut butter and jelly sandwich becomes a lobster dinner
• 3-feet of snow becomes an erupting volcano
• A football game becomes a ballet
• A long math class becomes a rock concert
• A chalkboard becomes a neon sign
• A textbook becomes a small talking dog
• A boy looking out the window becomes the most attentive student in the class
• A girl falling out of her chair becomes a gymnast
• A teacher who everyone thinks is mean adopts a homeless golden retriever puppy
• The shortest boy in the class becomes the leading scorer for the basketball team
• The shyest girl in the class becomes the lead in the school musical The drab school building becomes a rocket ship
• The track becomes a car raceway
• The cafeteria becomes a casino
• The schoolyard becomes an airport terminal
• A set of keys becomes my extended family

The Autobiography Project

Welcome! The Creative Writing Forum is teaming up with Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary Event and One Book, One Philadelphia to invite you to submit a memoir or your own using no more than 300 words. After we have helped you revise your work, you can submit it directly to the project. To get started on writing your autobiography now, try one of the prompts below and then submit your writing to us for help with revising it.

The Things I Carry

What’s in your pocketbook or pocket right now, and what story does it tell?

Examine the objects closely – touch them, smell them, turn them over – perhaps there’s one in particular that you have something to say about? What’s its history; how did it come into your life; and where has it traveled to with you? How did you feel when you bought or received it, and how do you feel about it now? Maybe someone else owned one of these things before you: what does the object communicate about your relationship with them? Or perhaps there’s something missing from your bag/pocket, something that was lost or stolen from you?

Did I Ever Tell You About The Time ...?

What was your funniest or most embarrassing moment ever?

Put yourself back into a moment in your life when something out of the ordinary happened to you. It might jump-start your memory to connect back to what was happening in the world, and in your life? Who was with you, and what was their relationship to you – friend, enemy, supporter or source of conflict? You can tell the story just the way it happened. Or you can also choose to reflect on the effect this moment had on your life, and why it’s still memorable for you. Just be sure to use specific details to bring the time and the story alive to a reader. Has the way you feel about this moment changed over time? Whom do you share this story with, normally, and why?

My Home Was Here

Chances are, some of the most meaningful moments in your life might have happened in your own home. Think about a place you’ve lived, and the things you remember most strongly from your time there.

You can pick a particular room: what stories could those four walls tell? Perhaps you might want to start out by just describing what the room looks like, and see what memories are triggered. For example, if you start with your kitchen, you might find yourself describing the foods you ate there, and then move on to who cooked them for you, or a meal that was a special occasion. Or, think back to a time you’ve moved, packing everything you own in boxes and saying goodbye to a place that you’ve called home: why were you moving? What happened in your life to make you want or need to change homes? What changes did moving bring to your life?

"One Book, One Philadelphia" Persona Poem

Place yourself in the shoes of a person who lived in a different time period and write a poem about it. You can go back in time one generation or many if you wish. Picture the person you are writing about based on what you already know about him or her. You can also do research to find out more information on that particular person. What type of clothing does this person wear? What does he or she look like? How does he or she feel? Does this person eat mushy cereal or high class steaks? Write your poem from the point of view of the person you've become. Try writing your poem in the first person -- use "I." Think of this piece as an experiment and be as creative as possible.

Here are some examples. You may use them or come up with your own.

• Anne Frank http://www.annefrank.com
• An American missionary living in Nepal
• Osiris letting soldiers in to the Afterlife http://www.belinus.co.uk/mythology/Osiris.htm
• Hatshepsut walking in her garden http://www.bediz.com/hatshep/index.html
• Khufu ordering workers to build a pyramid http://www.guardians.net/egypt/khufu.htm
• Ra http://www.fruitofthenile.com/ra.htm
• Anubis http://members.aol.com/egyptart/anubis.html
• King Tut http://www.sis.gov.eg/tut/html/tut04.htm
• A grandmother living in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge http://www.holocaustechoes.com/5savin.html
• An eighteen year-old student protesting the Vietnam War at Kent State http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/05/04/kent.state.02/
• A seventy-year-old passenger on a highjacked airplane en route to Cuba http://www.staugustine/gallery/hijacked_plane_from_cuba/1.shtml/
• A passenger on one of the 9/11 planes http://www.worldnetdaily.com/article.asp?ARTICLE_IS=26676
• A Zapatista guerilla soldier in the Sierra Madre Mountains in the South of Mexico http://flag.bla ckened.net/revolt/zapatista.html
• Rosa Parks http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/par0bio-1
• Coretta Scott King, the wife of Martin Luther King http://www.galegroup.com/free_resources/whm/bio/king_c_s.htm
• Janis Joplin http://www.officialjanis.com
• Jimi Hendrix http:/ /www.musicfanclubs.org/jimihendrix/home.htm
• A Zapotec Indian being converted to Christianity by Spanish Conquistadores http://www.mu.edu/library/collections/archives/indians.html
• A seventeen year old boy about to leave home to fight in the streets of Paris during the French Revolution http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/french/french.html
• A fifteen year old girl looking up at the sky the day the bomb falls in the city of Hiroshima http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/peacesite/English/S tage1/S1-1E.html
• A middle school student whose grandparents died in the Holocaust visiting Yad Vashem in Jerusalem www.yad-vashem.org.il
• A 60-year-old father visiting his son's memorial at the VietNam War Memorial in Washington DC http://thewall-usa.com/
• A 45-year-old woman visiting her mother in East Berlin for the first time after decades when the Berlin War was taken down http://www.dailysoft.com/berlinwall/
• A 10-year-old boy whose journalist-father is killed by Stalin during the "Night of the Murdered Poets" http://www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/081202MurderedPoets.shtml
• The Iraqi lawyer who rescued Jessica Lynch http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/04/04/sprj.irq.pow.informer/index.html
• A buddhist monk arrested in Tibet http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/1995/2/28-3_1.html
• A twelve-year-old boy or girl who works with their family as a rug weaver during the war in Afghanistan who thinks a package being dropped from an airplane is food but it's really a bomb. http://www.soawne.org/CollateralDamage.html