Writing Exercise: Say It Again Like It’s the First Time

Writing Exercise: Say It Again Like It’s the First Time

Key Techniques Illustrated by the Quotation

1. Voice-driven reinvention: Originality through personal voice and context rather than novelty of content.

2. Reframing the familiar: Making old truths feel urgent, strange, or newly relevant.

3. Subtext and layering: Saying one thing while meaning something deeper, trusting the reader to hear what’s not said directly.

Writing Prompt (500 words)

Write a monologue or interior close-third-person passage in which a character delivers a familiar truth, cliché, or platitude—but in a way that makes the reader hear it as if for the first time. The character must believe what they’re saying, but the deeper meaning should emerge from subtext, contradiction, or situation.

Choose a line like “Everything happens for a reason,” “You never really know someone,” “Love is blind,” “Time heals all wounds,” or invent one. Let the story around that statement complicate or undermine it.

Set the scene in a moment of pressure or confrontation. Maybe your character is speaking to a child, a dying parent, a stranger on a plane, their ex at a funeral. Their context will change the cliché into something alive—or expose how hollow it rings. Let the tension between what’s said and what’s felt do the work.

Evaluation Criteria for Success

• The language transforms or reframes a familiar truth through voice, situation, or imagery.

• The scene avoids summarizing or moralizing; it dramatizes complexity through subtext.

• The character’s voice feels specific, alive, and rooted in their worldview and emotional state.

• There is emotional tension between the surface statement and the reader’s deeper understanding.

• The writing avoids exposition and lets the context imply meaning.

Strong vs. Weak Response Examples

Strong: A hospice nurse comforts a patient by saying, “We all go back to the sea,” but the story reveals she’s terrified of water and has never been on a boat. Her voice is tender but contradictory. The image lingers.

Weak: A narrator states, “Life is short,” then reflects generically on this idea for 500 words. There’s no dramatic situation, no stakes, no personal specificity.

Workshopping/Revision Questions

• Does the voice feel lived-in or borrowed? Could it only belong to this character?

• Where is the tension between what’s said and what’s unsaid?

• Does the story rely on the reader’s familiarity with the cliché—or does it build a new understanding?

• Is the emotional or narrative context earning the truth, or is it being handed to the reader flatly?

• Could the scene work without the central line? If yes, cut it or raise the stakes.

Recommended Reading

“Saint Marie” from Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich – for how it transforms religious platitudes through voice, contradiction, and cultural dissonance. Marie’s narrative is infused with conviction, defiance, and self-deception. What she says often clashes with what the reader sees, allowing Erdrich to reinvent familiar themes like redemption, pride, and suffering in layered, compelling ways.

AI Disclosure Statement:

This writing prompt was created in collaboration with ChatGPT, an AI model by OpenAI, to support creative practice. ChatGPT assisted with idea generation and drafting; the final text was edited by the author. The illustration was created using Google Gemini.