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Currently viewing the tag: "character"
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The mountain sat impassively behind her, but its pull was nonetheless magnetic. A task once undertaken was to be completed. It was her dogma. Her self-definition. -Jennifer Jordan, Savage Summit
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story or poem based on today’s reading.
Journaling Prompt: What is exerting a magnetic pull on your life?
Art Prompt: The Pull of the Mountain
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about something that has a magnetic pull on your life.
Photo Credit: www.metaphoricalplatypus.com on Flickr
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besmirch v. [with obj.]
1 damage (someone’s reputation): he had besmirched the good name of his family.
2 LITERARY make (something) dirty or discoloured: the ground was besmirched with blood.
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story about someone whose reputation is besmirched.
Journaling Prompt: Has your reputation ever been besmirched? Write about how that felt.
Art Prompt: Besmirch
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about character and reputation using the word of the week.
Photo Credit: irina slutsky on Flickr
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“People like to think they are inherently moral creatures — you either have character or you don’t. But our studies show that the same person may make a completely different decision based on what hat they may be wearing at the time, often without even realizing it.”
Leavitt, an assistant professor of management in the College of Business at OSU, is an expert on non-conscious decision making and business ethics. He studies how people make decisions and moral judgments, often based on non-conscious cues.
…”What we consider to be moral sometimes depends on what constituency we are answering to at that moment,” Leavitt said. “For a physician, a human life is priceless. But if that same physician is a managed-care administrator, some degree of moral flexibility becomes necessary to meet their obligations to stockholders.” -Science Daily
Fiction Writing Prompt: Work on a character sketch which shows the way that situation affects ethics.
Journaling Prompt: Are you a different person at work than you are around your friends or your family? Write about your different personalities.
Art Prompt: Situational Ethics
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about ethics and how our choices are influenced by the situation in which we find ourselves.
Photo Credit: Alex E. Proimos on Flickr
Send to KindleSend to KindleWelcome to the Carnival of Creativity for September 9, 2012. All links will open in a new tab or window, so feel free to click through and leave some love in the comments. Once you close that window, you’ll be right back here for more linky goodness.
Announcements
Thanks for your patience while I was doing my Toastmaster thing. I didn’t win or place, but I had a fabulous time, learned and grew a great deal, and I am re-energized!
Resources/Tools
Gabriela Pereira presents Build Your Reading List posted at DIYFMA.
Sharing Our Work
Eula McLeod presents Tully posted at View from the Wine Press.
Emi Bauer presents Out of the Mouths of Babes… er… Teenagers… posted at Emi Bauer: Confessions of an Incompetent Blogger.
Kenneth Lange presents Winston Churchill: A First-Class Writer posted at Kenneth Lange.
JeanNicole Rivers presents The Funeral Part I posted at JeanNicole Rivers.
Liz Shaw presents The Great Pillow Caper posted at Liz Andra Shaw.
wizard presents God Doesn’t Want Man to become Stupid- Why Was Man Evicted from the Garden of Eden posted at Wizard Corpse.
Aleksej Lazanski presents Get Healthier posted at Aleksej Lazanski.
Writing Quote of the Week
Jack Shepherd presents 30 Indispensable Writing Tips From Famous Authors posted at BuzzFeed.
Writing Tips and Prompts
Chrys Fey presents Your Thoughts + Your Emotions = Your Characters posted at Writing with Fey.
Charlie Jane Anders presents Children’s author crowdsources the editing of her new time-travel novel posted at io9.
Carolyn and Gary Smailes presents Writing a Novel? Is Ignoring The Importance Of Setting Killing Your book? posted at BubbleCow.
Creativity Boosts
Lali Foster presents Junot Diaz and Min Jin Lee on Writer Origins posted at Asian American Writers Workshop.
Podcasts
This week’s podcast at Writing Excuses is all about Brainstorming with Dan. I found this episode fascinating – don’t miss it!
Visual Arts
Max Arshakov presents Roman Forum posted at History of Architecture.
Creative People Paying it Forward
Atticus Press presents Rejection Sucks. Get Even. posted at Atticus Books.
The Business of Creativity
C.S. Lakin presents 10 Reasons to Self-Publish – No More Excuses posted at Live Write Thrive.
Roni Loren presents Bloggers Beware: You Can Get Sues for Using Pics on your Blog posted at Roni Loren: For the Fearless Romantic.
LuSundra Everett presents 25 Compelling Headlines You Can Swipe posted at MilSpouse’s Empower Network Blog.
Jeremy Biberdorf presents 5 Places You’re Not Looking for Content Ideas posted at Modest Money.
Spam of the Week
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That’s all for this week. Be sure to submit your article for next week’s Carnival of Creativity by Friday at midnight!
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Our studies suggest that more positive attitudes toward greed and the pursuit of self-interest among upper-class individuals, in part, drive their tendencies toward increased unethical behavior,” said lead researcher Paul Piff of UC Berkeley.
The research revealed that relative to the lower class, upper-class individuals are more likely to break the law while driving, more likely to exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies, more likely to take valued goods from others, more likely to lie in a negotiation, more likely to cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize and more likely to endorse unethical behavior at work.
“The relative privilege and security enjoyed by upper-class individuals give rise to independence from others and a prioritization of the self and one’s own welfare over the welfare of others–what we call ‘greed,’” explained Piff, whose research was funded in part by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
“This is likely to cause someone to be more inclined to break the rules in his or her favor, or to perceive themselves as, in a sense, being ‘above the law,’” he said and therefore become more prone to committing unethical behavior. -Science Daily
Writing Prompt: Write a story, scene or poem about entitlement in an upper class protagonist.
Journaling Prompt: Write about a time when you were affected by someone who felt entitled.
Art Prompt: Greed
Nonfiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about the problem of entitlement in today’s culture.
Photo Credit: erix! on Flickr
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“We think children are born with a skeleton of general expectations about fairness,” explains Sloane, “and these principles and concepts get shaped in different ways depending on the culture and the environment they’re brought up in.” Some cultures value sharing more than others, but the ideas that resources should be equally distributed and rewards allocated according to effort are innate and universal.
Other survival instincts can intervene. Self-interest is one, as is loyalty to the in-group — your family, your tribe, your team. It’s much harder to abide by that abstract sense of fairness when you want all the cookies — or your team is hungry. That’s why children need reminders to share and practice in the discipline of doing the right thing in spite of their desires.
Still, says Sloane, “helping children behave more morally may not be as hard as it would be if they didn’t have that skeleton of expectations.”
This innate moral sense might also explain the power of early trauma, Sloane says. Aside from fairness, research has shown that small children expect people not to harm others and to help others in distress. “If they witness events that violate those expectations in extreme ways, it could explain why these events have such negative and enduring consequences.” -Science Daily
Writing Prompt: Write a story, scene, or poem about children using the information in the study quoted above.
Journaling Prompt: What are your expectations about fairness and sharing? How do your expectations match up with the reality in your family? in your workplace? in your social circle?
Art Prompt: Children Sharing
Photo Credit: .jocelyn. on Flickr
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Creative people are more likely to cheat than less creative people, possibly because this talent increases their ability to rationalize their actions, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.
“Greater creativity helps individuals solve difficult tasks across many domains, but creative sparks may lead individuals to take unethical routes when searching for solutions to problems and tasks,” said lead researcher Francesca Gino, PhD, of Harvard University. -Science Daily
Writing Prompt: Write a scene about someone who cheats. What is the inner monologue that the person goes through to rationalize the cheating?
Journaling Prompt: Write about a time you cheated. How did you rationalize it to yourself?
Art Prompt: Cheat
Photo Credit: Casey Serin on Flickr
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People who loved her always said Bessie’s face was better than a beautiful one, for it told nothing but the truth about itself. It did not say, “Come, admire me,” as some faces say, but, “Come, trust me if you can.” -Our Bessie, Rosa N. Carey
Writing Prompt: Describe a person’s face without using a physical description.
Journaling Prompt: Describe your own face as you would like people to see you.
Art Prompt: Honest face
Creative NonFiction / Speech Writing Prompt: Describe someone or someplace without giving a physical description.
Photo Credit: cinnamon_girl on Flickr.
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Have you ever been put into an extreme situation where you had to make a difficult decision in order to survive?
He was the man who ate his shoes, and had been for twenty-three years, ever since he returned to England in 1822 after his first, failed overland expedition across northern Canada to find the North-West Passage. He remembered the sniggers and jokes upon his return. Franklin had eaten his shoes — and he’d eaten worse on that botched three-year journey, including tripe-de-roche, a disgusting gruel made from lichen scraped from rocks. Two years out and starving, he and his men — Franklin had dazedly divided his troop into three groups and left the other two bands to survive or die on their own — had boiled the uppers on their boots and shoes to survive. Sir John — he was just John then, he was knighted for incompetency after a later overland voyage and botched polar expedition by sea — had spent days in 1821 chewing on nothing more than scraps of untanned leather. His men had eaten their buffalo sleeping robes. Then some of them had moved on to other things. But he had never eaten another man. -Dan Simmons, The Terror: A Novel
Writing Prompt: Write about a character in a life and death situation. What does he or she do to survive?
Journaling Prompt: Have you ever been in a life or death situation? What did you do to survive? If you’ve never been in this kind of situation, write about one that you know about, either about someone you know or something you’ve seen on the news.
Art Prompt: Arctic Survival
Photo Credit: Instant Vantage on Flickr
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Some people are natural leaders, but it’s important to know whether their leadership derives from a motivation of service or narcissism.
“Narcissism can sometimes be useful in a leader, says Nevicka. In a crisis, for instance, people feel that a strong, dominant person will take control and do the right thing, ‘and that may reduce uncertainty and diminish stress.’
“But in the everyday life of an organization, ‘communication — sharing of information, perspectives, and knowledge — is essential to making good decisions. In brainstorming groups, project teams, government committees, each person brings something new. That’s the benefit of teams. That’s what creates a good outcome.’ Good leaders facilitate communication by asking questions and summarizing the conversation — something narcissists are too self-involved to do.
“Nevicka says the research has implications beyond the workplace — for instance, in politics. ‘Narcissists are very convincing. They do tend to be picked as leaders. There’s the danger: that people can be so wrong based on how others project themselves. You have to ask: Are the competencies they project valid, or are they merely in the eyes of the beholder?’” -Science Daily
Writing Prompt: Create a character sketch for both a servant leader and a narcissistic leader. How do they differ?
Journaling Prompt: Write about leaders you have worked with and their motivations.
Art Prompt: Narcissistic leader
Photo Credit: Beverly & Pack on Flickr
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I believe that the most important thing about writing is to HAVE FUN! You can worry about things like commas, point of view, tenses, etc., later. Right now, just start writing!
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