Writing With Rules

I've greatly enjoyed the last two weeks' creative writing blog posts. For today, I'd like to think about how writing rules or even artificial guidelines can actually be freeing. Think about a sonnet: the highest form of poetry, or perhaps second only to the epic. When you write one, you don't have to decide how many lines your poem will have, or how many syllables you'll use in each line. You can choose between a couple of rhyme schemes and stanza patterns. In spite of these restrictions, poets have tremendous freedom to work within the confines.

For today, choose one of the following exercises.

1. Write a paragraph using all one-syllable words. Your paragraph should be coherent and meaningful: carefully choose monosyllabic words that will convey your meaning.

Consider these lines from Robert Frost: "Home is the place where/when you have to go there/they have to take you in." It's evocative and nostalgic and maybe melancholy, and all the words have one syllable.

2. Write 26-sentence short story, starting with a sentence that begins with an "A" and going through the alphabet and ending with a sentence that starts with the letter "Z."

3. Describe a place or a person using no adjectives or adverbs other than articles (a, an, the). Can you convey the essence of the person or place without descriptive modifiers?