Writing exercises | speedwriting

In my many travels on the net, I’ve come across a fantastic idea on Deviant Art. Some of the more prolific artists often engage in an exercise called speedpainting. This is where they set themselves a given time limitation, and commit to creating a complete work within that timeframe. This exercise has been adapted by a few comic drawers recently, in which they have done a 24 hour strip, one page an hour, rendering 24 pages. I’m sure that there have been countless such activities already created for the realm of literature in the form of Writersports and whatnot, but I took my inspiration primarily from the Deviant Art example.

Here are the parameters I set for myself:

– A maximum of four movements.
– A maximum of ten minutes writing time per movement with 15 minutes allowed for the last and concluding movement.

For this exercise, the movements were named as follows:

– The setting
– The protagonist
– The moment
– The conclusion

The reason why I allowed 15 minutes for the conclusion is that by the end of the moment phase, I should well and truly know where I’m going, but may need just a little more time to get it out. As it happens, for my first attempt, I concluded in 13 minutes, taking the full 10 for the other movements.

Tomorrow hopefully I’ll post my response to my piece, and write notes in regards to my self-assesment.