Line by Line: A Little Writing Experiment

Hey, writing buddies! Are you in need of a quick and easy writing exercise? We're in the mood to experiment a little, so buckle up, and get ready to write!

credit: floodmark original photo

Step One: Freewrite

Okay, this might sound like a no-brainer, but to get started with today's poetry prompt, you'll need to freewrite for five minutes. (Psssst: check out our freewriting prompts if you're feeling stuck!) Here's the catch: you have to write margin to margin. No page breaks, and no editing as you write! Just write yourself a big block of text, take a breath, and move on to the next step.

Step Two: Number Your Lines

Go down the page of your notebook and assign a number to each line. If you're writing in a smaller journal this will be no problem; if you write on legal pad or something of a similar size, you might want to fold the page in half and give each line two numbers (one number on either side of the fold).

Step Three: Transcribe

Normally at this point in the process, you'd do your own editing. This time, our writing experiment is going to do the editing for you! Grab another piece of paper. Using the following numbers, copy your lines from your freewriting in this order onto your new sheet of paper:

1

2

7
12
4
20
18
19
10
11
5
6
8
21
3

Because we always try our own poetry prompts, here's what happened with my latest freewrite (for which, I used this word list prompt) when I tried this writing experiment:

Is this how I want to leave this poem? Certainly not; there are some odd sentence transitions, and I'd like to give this poem a bit of a shape before I call it done. So, on to the last step.

Step Four: Final Edits

Now, it's time to turn your Franken-poem into something a little more cohesive. If you, like me, tend to go in circles when you freewrite, you may have ended up with a very cyclical poem, despite our random numbering. Or, of course, your poem might be a total hodge-podge of your thoughts. Not to worry! At this point, you may edit to your heart's content: you just can't move your lines around. That's the only catch.

Here's what I ended up with:

Now it's your turn! Have fun!

Do you like writing prompts with restrictions, or do you prefer to write freely? If you tried this prompt, what was the result? Let's talk about it; leave a comment below!