Out of Class Exercises

→Social Media Timeline

Go through each of the years on the Social Media Timeline (Time Front Page) and identify (in writing) what the most important event in your life was that year. Plus state which of the Social Media events of that year have you had interaction with at any time and comment on its usefulness to your daily life.

→Braiding Time

Choose a character that you will write four paragraphs about. In the first paragraph, your character should be involved in some present ongoing action (preparing a meal, looking for a lost object, going to pick up a date, etc.). The exercise works better if you give your character a problem or a conflict.

Now, keeping the character still engaged in the ongoing activity, write a second paragraph in which the character is imagining something s/he will do (or that will happen) in the future.

In your third paragraph, still using the present activity as a starting point, write about something from the past that the ongoing action is prompting your character to remember.

In your fourth and final paragraph, use elements of forward-looking and backward-looking as your character continues with, or completes the action. Work on making transitions between time frames feel continuous and smooth.

→Slowing Down Time

Write a short scene that captures some intense moment from your life, such as your first kiss, or the first time you were deeply ashamed or powerfully scared.

The bulk of the scene must take in no more than five seconds. That is: you should be writing about a very small segment of time.

Rather than moving the action forward, concentrate on slowing down and moving the action inward. They key here is to keep yourself from racing ahead. You must capture everything that is going on in this very short chronology.

→Time Travel

Pretend that you have just won a national lottery to be the person to travel into the past in a time machine. The conditions: you can return to any moment you choose, but only for an hour, and though you will be invisible, you will retain you present consciousness. Write a brief story about your experience imaginary voyage into the past. What moment will you select? What do you think you will tell the world when you return?

→Multimedia Activity

Make time longer with words

Shorten time with photos

Speed up time with video

With a poem, redeem time

With a camera, Xerox time