Neil Bowen on (Edited )
The celebrated American novelist and short story writer George Saunders teaches on a super-elite creative writing course at Syracuse University. Fortunately, for mere literary mortals, he has shared some of the material he uses with his students on this course. He's my slightly adapted version of one of them:
Creative Writing exercise 1
Edit the following:
Entering the large Chinese restaurant, Jim saw his ex-wife, Sara, sitting closely beside a tall, well-dressed young man who looked to be at least twenty years younger than her. Jim just couldn’t believe it. It was really quite shocking to see Sara with someone so much younger than her, younger than Jim too, since he and Sara were the same age, so shocking in fact that, in shock, Jim dropped the keys of his new car in surprise.
‘Sir,’ the very short waiter with the bushy moustache said in a French accent, ‘you dropped your car keys,’ and, with a bow, handed Jim his car keys.