This was one of my favorite exercises from my writing classes.. the Take Three Nouns exercise; write for 10 mins adding the nouns: clock, bathroom, and gymnasium.
Please do not steal my writing, but feel free to do this Take Three Nouns Exercise yourself, leave it in the comment section below, or if you post it on your own website, Goodreads, or Wattpad, leave a link in the comment section so I can read it! Let’s get creative together!
(Use a timer! You only get 10 minutes… GO!) Don’t waste your time in edits, just write! We will edit our stories over the next couple of days with another Take Three Nouns Exercise, and then a total flesh out to make it a good story.
Take Three Nouns – Day One
I don’t trust clocks. Some people set them a few minutes ahead; some people set them a few minutes behind. You also get those people who forget to change their clocks with the seasons and refuse to get the kind that auto update. They have to remember to add or subtract an hour… always late, or always early… Mine goes backwards. I don’t mean just the ones I wear; I mean the ones around me… in my car, in my house, on my computer. Backwards, every last one of them.
It all started for me when I was at a school dance. The chaperone called out “Everyone select a partner and let’s get started.” The band started playing, and I stood there alone, waiting for someone to ask me to dance. I looked at my watch and realized it had been twenty minutes since the chaperone had called out for us to find a dance partner. My watch had stopped working.
I stood there, watching the other dancers enjoying themselves, happy with the partners they had picked. I was still alone; there was no one else to dance with, no strays looking for a dance partner. Like in dodge ball, I was picked last, but this time, I wasn’t picked at all.
Just another hour of my life I will never get back, wasted.
As the chaperone approached me, I could see the pity on his face that I was the lone wallflower standing at the side of the gym looking like a pathetic loser. I ran off to the bathroom before he could approach me further.
I opened the bathroom door, and sat in a stall in silence, feeling sorry for myself. What a loser I was. Someday I was going to show everyone… I was going to be something someday and I would get the last laugh.
I finally got the courage to go back out to the gymnasium floor and rejoin my friends. As I opened the door and walked out, I was hit with a blinding white flash. It burned my eyes, and I couldn’t see anything in front of me. I threw up a hand to shield my eyes, but it was pointless. I fell to my knees as the glare got stronger. Another flash erupted in front of me, and I found myself in my bedroom getting ready for the dance. My watch had reset itself.
I didn’t go to the dance; I had gotten the luck to reset that night. I was going to find something else better to do with that hour I had gotten back. I decided to head out to the woods and see what trouble I could get into.
