Writing Exercise: Finding Beauty in What Breaks

Writing Exercise: Finding Beauty in What Breaks

Key Writing Practice Development Techniques

1. Embracing unexpected or imperfect beauty in storytelling—recognizing that narrative beauty may not align with initial ideals but holds value regardless.

2. Accepting the constraints and limitations inherent in one’s writing voice and subject matter, working deeply within those boundaries rather than resisting them.

3. Letting go of romanticized expectations about the writer’s identity or lineage to find authentic creative expression rooted in what emerges naturally from the work.

Writing Prompt (500 words)

Write a short narrative centered on a character who confronts a personal or creative failure that shatters their idealized vision of themselves or their craft. Show how this failure reshapes their understanding of beauty, value, or success in their world. Your character may be an artist, writer, musician, or anyone whose identity is tied to a dream or ideal. Explore the tension between their original romantic vision and the imperfect reality they must accept. Focus on how they find meaning or beauty in unexpected ways, through limitations, flaws, or unanticipated outcomes. Avoid neat resolutions; let ambiguity or discomfort remain.

Evaluation Criteria

Successful responses:

• Depict a character’s internal conflict with unmet expectations or thwarted ideals realistically and compellingly.

• Illustrate how the character’s understanding of beauty or value shifts through confrontation with imperfection or failure.

• Use vivid sensory and emotional details to ground abstract ideas in concrete experience without over-explaining.

• Avoid idealizing or romanticizing failure; instead, engage with its complexity and messiness.

• Demonstrate control over narrative pacing and tone to maintain tension between hope and resignation.

Weak responses:

• Rely on clichés or sentimentality about “failure makes you stronger” without nuance.

• Flatten the character’s emotional journey by rushing to resolution or glossing over conflict.

• Portray beauty or success only as initially imagined, ignoring or dismissing alternate forms.

• Use vague abstractions rather than specific details to explore the character’s transformation.

• Neglect the character’s internal perspective in favor of external plot events alone.

Follow-up Questions for Workshop/Revision

• How does your character’s evolving sense of beauty or worth complicate or deepen their identity?

• Where in the story do you show resistance or denial of this new reality, and how could that be heightened?

• Are the limitations or imperfections your character encounters integral to the story’s emotional impact?

• How might ambiguity or unresolved tension enhance the story’s resonance rather than detract from it?

• Which sensory or concrete details anchor the abstract themes in lived experience?

Recommended Reading 

Joyce Carol Oates’s short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” exemplifies the uneasy tension between youthful romantic ideals and the harsh, unexpected realities that disrupt them. The story’s precise, unsettling detail and ambiguous resolution demonstrate how beauty and horror can coexist, illustrating a writer’s acceptance of complex, imperfect truths.

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.