Lukeman Exercise Part 1 | Samantha Gay

I have trouble with using too many commas in my writing, so I started a new piece of fiction and wrote a page without using a single comma.

The children laughed as they ran up the green sloping hill. They had just escaped from their mothers’ watchful gaze and were running into the trees. It would be fun to play their game of hide and seek there. Kyle reached the edge of the woods before any of the other children did and turned to watch them as they came running through the long grass of the field. They weren’t too far behind him. Kyle folded his arms and waited patiently. He was the oldest of the children and felt responsible for his younger sisters and cousins. They trusted him and looked up to him; he was nearly ten after all.
Soon the other children had joined him in the shade of the trees.
“What game should we play?” He asked as he looked around the circle of children.
“Indians and settlers!” Alex shouted excitedly.
“Pirates!” Sam shouted at the same time. The two boys glared at each other but Jane’s shout distracted them.
“I want to play princesses and princes.” Jane declared. “And so do Kyle and Chris.”
Kyle felt annoyed. He hadn’t said anything about wanting to play that game. It sounded boring.
“No I don’t.” Kyle announced angrily. “I wanted to play Three Musketeers.”
The other children looked at him and then at each other.
“What kind of a game is that?” Kayla asked. “What is a musketeers?”
“A musketeer is a sword person. They are in book that my Daddy is reading. He told me about it last night.” Kyle said as he picked up a long tree branch and gave it an experimental swing. “It’s about four men who are really good at sword fighting and all of their battles.” He brandished the tree branch in Sam’s direction. “I wanted Daddy to read it to me but he said that I was too young.”
The other children perked up at this. A forbidden story was interesting.
“Can it have princesses in it?” Jane asked and her big eyes looked at Kyle eagerly.
“I guess so.” Kyle said distractedly; he was fencing with Alex. He added quickly. “But only if we musketeers don’t have to get married to you.”
Jane and Kayla clapped their hands and smiled.
“Ok! This will be fun! You will have to fight to free us from the evil bad-guys and swear to protect us forever!”
Kyle dodged a blow from Sam.
“Alright.” He said vaguely to Jane as he fought. Girls could be so boring sometimes. Why were the knights in stories always rescuing damsels? If he were a knight he wouldn’t have wasted time with girls; he would have used time far more wisely by conquering the world.
Kyle lunged forward and drew his stick across Alex’s chest. “You’re dead!”
Alex collapsed on the ground and groaned.
“Arrgg…you’ve killed me!”
Sam wiped his brow and stared down at his brother.
“Arg? We aren’t pirates. We are musketeers!”
“What do we say then?” Alex asked as he stood.
“I’ll show you.” Kyle said and held his stick high in the air.
“All for one and one for all!” He yelled.
Sam and Alex held their sticks up and shouted with him.
“All for one and one for all!”

Without commas it was really difficult not to let the sentences get too choppy and to keep the work flowing. It kind of worked, since my characters were children and the short sentences made the piece seem more childlike. It was really hard not to use a single comma, and I had to correct myself several times when I would automatically use them. This assignment also made me realize how much I appreciate the comma in writing, and was good practice for varying sentences in my larger works.

Lukeman Excercise Part One/ Cherity M. Prince-Phillips

I did the exercise where one had to imagine a character who thinks in short sentences.

Short sentences: I hate this. It’s cold outside. She’s laughing again while I freeze. If I go inside she’ll tell. I can’t stand it much longer. My fingers are turning blue. She’s almost done. Please, just hurry. I shove my hands in my pockets. It’s warm there away from her. I hate her.

Versus

Long sentences: She’s laughing again, while I freeze in her cold bitterness that permeates the air and suffocates my thoughts. Everything is frozen and blue in her slow calculating movements; if I go inside she will surely tell someone that it was me. So I watch, with my hands in my pockets, hating every minute of her slowness.

This person is a juvenile and he is cold. He’s impatient to be inside. The shortness is supposed to convey both the hurried thoughts and the coldness of both the outside and the girl. I think the short sentences work better because you feel more like you are the character versus you are watching the character. The shortness helps bring out his irritation. This lesson helped me understand the differences in how to push one's character across in a more believable way.

Lukeman Exercise Assignments | Dr. P

As I mentioned in class, please choose one assignment from each section of the Lukeman book and complete an exercise for each section. They are due by midnight of the day they are due.

Monday • 10/1 = Part One
Wednesday • 10/3 = Part Two
Friday • 10/5 = Part Three

This means you'll be submitting three posts to Stranger Than Wal-Mart this week. You'll receive a separate grade for each one.

Please don't just pick the shortest exercise. Really try to make it fit your needs and interests. The best entries (meaning, of course, the highest grades) will show us something. We'll be able to look at your entry and learn something about your writing. You'll be sharing a weakness, I know. That's what makes it worth reading. Hopefully, when you read other entries (and you should) you won't feel so alone or whipped by punctuation. Misery loves company, don't you think?

Take care to proofread your entries.

Your titles should look like this: Lukeman Exercise Part One | Your Name
Your labels should be (at least): Lukeman, punctuation, Your Name

Good luck out there.