Writing Exercises

The Jungle

The second exercise that I worked on is one that I love, mostly because it is open ended and allows a lot of free reign on whatever you are writing.

The Prompt: Using  the name of any setting, free-write until at least 1000 words are on the page.

This of course had a lot of flexibility. I used the setting Jungle and simply wrote until I felt finished, but I was also minding my words. The ending was tailored on purpose, as you will see, so that I would not need to continue writing to finish the piece.

Note: I made this post special! This is the unedited, longer-than-it-should-be version of the story. The next exercise will be my example of how one can "exercise" their editing skills and how you can use other people's hints (as well as a few tricks of the trade) to fix your story and make it amazing. I'll show you how I did it using this story! (This might also be the next section because I am too lazy to edit right now...)

So without further ado:

Jungle

There were days where life was a struggle. Where it was hard to even try to survive, when every minute was a danger in itself, another trap, another step closer to death.

Everything in this place tried to kill you. She was sure that for some, it was a survival tactic. But for others, it was for fun. The plants with their large leaves, broad trunks, and vibrant colors obscured countless predators and things just waiting for a taste of her blood.

Already that day she had narrowly avoided getting attacked by a man-eating plant. She knew it was a man-eating plant because she had observed one of her companions (enemies?) getting devoured by it, slowly dissolved by a loud, bubbly acid as the plant locked him in its immobile jaws and gained a new taste for human.

New taste, indeed, because this area was obviously untouched by human hands. It was so pure in its natural state that she almost felt bad for breaking leaves and crunching on unmentionables below. The only reason she felt no guilt was because she knew that the jungle would like nothing more than to kill her, to slowly, cruelly remove her from the area in tiny, painful bites.

You wouldn't automatically associate a jungle with death, she knew, if you were simply reading its name in a book or hearing it in passing. You would probably imagine with fascination the exotic plants, the hot, humid environment. One more educated would think of the dangerous but beautiful beasts, the creepy, large insects on the forest floor, perhaps even the birds and monkeys that live at the canopy.

But living in it? Even the least intelligent human knew what an improbable feat that was for an outsider. How the deadly creatures could end you instantaneously, how your luck might run out and day after day you get attacked by nameless fiends or becoming the potential for a juicy meal.

Yet here she found herself, on one of the least- preferred assignments. If you could call it an assignment. Assignment implied a willingness to be removed from the comforts of home to perhaps explore or study the land. No, this was forced upon her and every child her age in this new generation, this new horrible world.

Resting now on this large tree root, standing away from any unwanted bugs and wary of hanging snakes, her mind flew back to every history lesson she previously had.

It had began with the Powers. Places with a lot of sway in the world began fighting again. It was like the Cold War (was that it's name? That war where they all threatened those nuclear explosives but nothing ended up happening but talk? She WISHED they were in those times. It would be like a vacation.) but now they had the high-tech devices to actually back up their words.

People lived every day in fear, knowing that if any of the leaders were in a bad mood, they could simply press a few buttons, evacuate themselves for safety, and watch the world crumble. The tensions were so high that the leaders had actually publicly promised (with fingers crossed behind their backs) that they would not use Warfare in this fight, including those dangerous bombs.