Copy Just One Sentence and Write

This is a fun way to get inspired to write. It will start you thinking in new ways. It can even help you to (finally) start your novel.

Choose a novel (or any other book, for that matter) which you have or haven't read, and copy the opening sentence. Now journal for 250 words, carrying on from that opening sentence.

For example, here's the opening sentence from Jane Austen's hugely popular novel, Pride and Prejudice:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

Important: PLEASE avoid plagiarism
Make sure that you date this journal entry, AND put the opening sentence into quotation marks, AND write a brief note about where you copied the opening sentence from.

I know this may seem like overkill, or being too cautious, but two or three years from now, you may come across this journal entry and copy it into a current piece of writing, inadvertently including the opening sentence. It's vitally important that you get into the habit of always crediting your sources.

It's very easy to forget to do this. I wrote for magazines for many years, and each article had to have a list of sources. This got me into the habit of creating bibliographies for my working, and citing everything. In my early years as a writer, I kept boxes of index cards which were the resources I’d used writing magazines and books. These days, I keep my resource notes in plain text files, and in Evernote.

Why plain text? Because computer apps come and go. I've got notes from a decade ago that I can't access, because the program in which I created them is long defunct. Plain text is always readable.

Exercise 18: Open a book, and copy the opening sentence.

Then start writing. Write 250 words.