20/20 Hindsight
We’ve all written a story, submitted it, and thought What if I’d told it in first person? or I wish I’d written that longer. Or shorter?
In this free workshop, you get the chance to try all of those things, with a single story or essay. It’s all about staying with one story for a while, until we can really hear the best way to tell it.
To follow along, start at the bottom with the January post, and work your way up—or bounce around; it’s up to you!
Hindsight!
In case you missed it, here's a look back (see what we did there?) at the exercises in our 2020 workshop.
January: Write a story or essay in 1,000 words
February: Write the same piece in 100 words
March: Retain just 25 adjectives and adverbs from your original 1,000 word story
April: Write your story or essay using only dialogue
May: Write your story or essay from a different point of view
June: Write your story or essay in 2,000 words
July: Write your story or essay out of chronological order
August: Record your story or essay and transcribe it
September: Write your story or essay using a different voice
October: Write a poem using your story or essay as inspiration
November: Write a version of your story set in an alternate universe.
December: Write the final version of your story or essay in 1000 words.
20/20 Hindsight – Putting it all together
The final piece This is it: the culmination of a year of work! We've looked at your stories and essays inside out and upside down; we've changed their shape, size, and even point of view. Whether you participated every month or you decided to pick and choose the...
20/20 Hindsight – Tenth Variation
What if? 2020 has been a rollercoaster of a year, and we're sure we're not the only ones wondering if we've slipped into an alternative timeline or parallel universe—or maybe wishing we had. "What if" sounds like the stuff of speculative fiction—what if Hitler had...
20/20 Hindsight – Ninth Variation
Everyone's a poet Or at least, that's true this month! At its heart, a poem is often a story using emotion rather than narrative structure to draw the reader in. One of the ways we prove the humanity of our characters - fiction or non- is by helping the reader connect...
20/20 Hindsight – Eighth Variation
It was a dark and stormy night ... the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the...
20/20 Hindsight – Seventh Variation
Tap tap, is this thing on? Think about this: you're at a party. You're telling your favorite anecdote about the time you hid a bunch of frogs under a basket in the garage, and what happened when they got loose (spoilers: they scared your mom half to death and you got...
20/20 Hindsight – Sixth Variation
Out of time No, not you: you've still got plenty of time to join us! That's the joy of the Hindsight 2020 series: you can hop in at any point along the way. No, this month we're talking about chronology—the order of events in your story. Sometimes it makes sense to...
20/20 Hindsight – Fifth Variation
Bigger is better? We've been pretty stingy with words over the last few months. This month, we're feeling a little more generous! Like, so generous! And it's not just because our sample story originally came in at 2,700 words, at least 2,100 of which are "darlings."...
20/20 Hindsight – Fourth Variation
Where do you stand? In April we took away a lot of ways to add information to your story. In May, we're giving them back... and then some, with a shift in your point of view.Ready? May's assignment is: rewrite your story from a different point of view. (Maximum...
20/20 Hindsight – Third Variation
Talk to me Did you make it through March? April's requirements are more relaxed. Well, sort of. We're taking away all your expositional dialogue and you're going to show, not tell, us your story.Ready? April's assignment is: rewrite your story in only...
20/20 Hindsight – Second Variation
What have I done? Look, February's 20/20 was heckin' hard. We almost died trying to get our story down to wordcount. The good news is, that's the tightest wordcount you're going to have all year. The bad news is... we're still taking away your words, just in a whole...
20/20 Hindsight – First Variation
Tough love February is the month of love. Or lurrrrrrve, as we like to say it. So what better way to celebrate than to make you hate us just a little? Don't say you're not going to hate us. We hate us already. This is a hard one The good news is that this is probably...
20/20 Hindsight
Stay awhile, and listen. That's a line from a character in one of my most-played (I have no idea if it's my favorite but WOW did I play it a lot) (that's a pun, shoutout to the five people who got it) video games. Besides being a scratchy little soundbite from ages...