For November, we're working on settings, using an exercise invented by Caren Gussoff for the Gotham Writers' Workshop's Writing Fiction. Here are the instructions:
1) Choose a favorite or classic novel -- something you've read before -- and reread the first few pages. "Pay attention to how quickly you get some indication of the setting," Gussoff writes. "Notice how much or how little the setting is layered into the action and description."You may want to write out quite a bit of that first scene, set it aside, and then come back to it later to revise. Choose the best 600 words or so and submit it for our November prompt portfolio (which we'll post as soon as a few submissions have come in).
2) Now revise the opening scene, but in a dramatically different time and place. She suggests, for example, that you "put Scarlett O'Hara in contemporary Los Angeles and see how she does. (Probably very well.)" But it can be any character and any place and time: have fun with it.
Email me your 600 words or less by November 30, following the challenge guidelines. Let me know which book you're using, and provide any other information you want people to have, especially regarding feedback. If you would like some initial impressions, consider posting it in the forum first. And don't forget to read and comment on other writers' responses to the exercise.