Imperative

Write a fragment story that is made up entirely of imperative commands: Do this; Do that; contemplate the rear end of a woman who is walking out of your life. This exercise will be a sort of second-person narration (a you is implied in the imperative.) 500 words. 


If you have struggled for a good while writing this exercise and need some examples check out this wiki page or read this short story (Click on the link underneath the picture that says "Read an Excerpt")(How to be an other woman is not ENTIRELY imperatives but I believe you can get the point) for some examples on usage.You might ask yourself after you have finished this exercise, what happens between the commands? Hidden behind the imperatives are actions offstage - each sentence, in a sense, expresses the desire and the space between each command that contains the inevitability distressing reality, the way we all fall short of our own commands. They have to be, given the constraints of the method. 



One of the unintended consequences of this exercise is that some people discover different and imaginative ways of regulating time in their stories when these barking or plaintive commands take over the narrative. The effect of a command is to move time forward on the say-so of the commanding voice. Wake up to your neighbor’s noisy lovemaking after her night shift ends. Remember the images the sounds evoke when you greet her in the hall as you leave for your job, her shirt buttoned up wrong – or something like that.

You will also find yourself struggling to come up with different kinds of commands, unusual ways of beseeching someone to do something or not to do something. This is what you should be doing with your fiction at all times. These exercises in constraint should become second nature. You should become self-conscious as a writer without losing the ability to compose naturally.