Writing Prompt: EXCLUSION

Visual inspiration + mental exercise to start your writing week

Photograph by Aimee Liu

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Metaphortography Prompts are free visual and verbal writing prompts for inspiration and reflection. This is the Monday section of Aimee Liu’s MFA Lore. Our Wednesday section is Writer In The World, a curated collection of essays on the writing life by acclaimed MFA faculty and alumni. Well Published videos and other MFA Core essays on the craft and business of creative writing will drop each Saturday. Receive some or all of these newsletters by subscribing now:

EXCLUSION

It’s not like being shunned. Or is it? I’ve done nothing to offend. Or have I? I’m meant to be one of them. Aren’t I? Aren’t I?

My own voice suddenly shrieks in my ear, You idiot, of course, it’s your fault! They don’t want you, you’re stupid and strange and different and ugly. No! You’re not meant to be one of them. You never were.

Back away, a kinder voice lies. You don’t really need them. You like flying solo. You’d rather be alone. It’s what you do best.

So you do.

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EXCLUSION: Middle English, from Latin excludere, to close

1. the act or an instance of being denied participation, consideration, or inclusion

2. the state of being intentionally barred, rejected, or shunned

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Here is your writing prompt:

As you contemplate the image above, recall a time when you either felt excluded or excluded someone else from your inner circle. Maybe from a team? A social gathering? A club or group? A meeting? A children’s party? A family unit?

Settle yourself in that situation and role as either target or instigator, and write a scene out of that memory, considering:

• What was the social context?

• Who was involved in the act of exclusion, and what was their pecking order?

• What reasons were given, either explicitly or implicitly?

• Why did you tell yourself this was happening?

• How was the exclusion communicated?

• What was the reaction? How was it received, and what happened next?

• How did you feel about yourself in the moment?

• How did the dynamics of the group change before, during, and after the exclusion?

• Was the excluded target ever allowed back into the group?

• Did any subsequent acts of reckoning follow this event?

• Do you think now that the exclusion was justified?

• How long have you carried this memory, and what are its lingering effects?

Now, trade places. If you were the instigator, write the same scene from the POV of the target. Or, vice versa.

Did you learn anything new from this switch in perspective?

Loreates’ Corner

I’m delighted to introduce you to a few of the wonderful stacks by writers in our community. Please read, subscribe, and share! And if you’re an MFA Lore subscriber with a great writing stack that I haven’t mentioned, please drop the link in a comment, so I can add you to our Corner.

Dr. Jane Bormeister writes Captain Rhetoric

Kathleen Schmidt writes Publishing Confidential

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Saturday, May 30 at 9am PT

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Tuesday, June 2, at 10am PT

Well Published, Live! with novelist Julie Buntin on her new book ‘Famous Men

I’m delighted to invite you to my next Well Published, Live! with novelist Julie Buntin, whose new novel, Famous Men, is forthcoming from Random House in July. Her debut, Marlena, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize and longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize.

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