Composition Experiments List

In the spirit of Charles Bernstein and Bernadette Mayer and their poetic experiments list, this is the beginning of my Composition Experiments List. Feel free to borrow from and add to this list and tell me about it!

*Do an exquisite corpse on the theme of “your experience with college” or another nonfiction topic. Since this is nonfiction, a topic should be chosen to direct the paper.

*If Conceptualist Artists could just write about the art object they intended to make without having to actually make it, what it would mean for them to "not write" a paper.

*Do a research/brainstorming exquisite corpse – write a topic on a piece of paper and pass it around the room, with everyone contributing an idea for that topic.

*Chance operations – bring in a previous paper they have written or a draft of one. Use a chance operation such as a roll of the dice, to determine the order of the paragraphs. How does that change the paper? Does it make a difference what order it is written in? (Encourages rewriting and revisiting a paper.)

*Write with your eyes closed. (Forces you to keep writing and not stop in brainstorming.)

*Spontaneous research: choose a book or an article. Close your eyes and point to a passage. Write that down. Do this repeatedly five or more additional times. String those together to see what you get.

*Pick a short passage from a book or research article and do a 3-5 minute freewrite about it.

*Do an example of the most pretentious writing you can

*Try writing a piece with as many clichés as you can.

*Try writing with predominantly figurative language.

*Try writing straightforward with no figurative language, metaphors, or similes.

*Try writing a thesis sentence or an opening paragraph using text language. (This is good for helping students to see that there are all kinds of grammars that are good in many different settings.)

Excuse Poem

I forgot where I parked my car.
The police came and towed it
away. I lost my keys.
I lost my license. I
forgot your address.
And phone number.
I got lost on the way there.
I ran out of gas. I
couldn't see in the dark
because my headlights
were broken. I turned
around and went home.

I will call you when I get there.


Based on an exercise on Charles Bernstein and Bernadette Mayer's Experiments List.