Revision Exercise:
Opening Up Your Story

Choose a story to work with that is in early draft form.  Read it through if you need to in order to familiarize yourself again with the characters and the story.  Then find a place in the story to insert one of the following sentences (change the pronoun as necessary).

-The last few night she had had a recurring dream (nightmare) about _____
-Her mother had always warned her that ______
-One thing I couldn’t say was __________
-The telephone rang.  It was a wrong number, but the caller refused to hang up.  Instead, she -----
-Something seemed different -----
-The last time she had worn this _____ was when _____
-If someone had said make a wish, he would have wished for ____
-As for God, ____
-People were probably saying _____
-This time last year he was ________
-Five years from now, he’ll be ________
-Secretly, he collected _____
-Suddenly she remembered she had forgotten to_______
-The TV (or CD player) was tuned to ___________
-the smell of  _____ brought back _______
-He suspected that _________
-As a child, he had learned _____________
Allow your subconscious to go with the material for at least a few sentences.  Watch what the inserted material teaches you about the story.