A basic exercise

Introducing snippets

Writelike exercises are built around snippets. A snippet is a piece of text from an authentic source.

They can be quite varied! Here's a short and simple snippet:

I had gone skiing once when I was eight. I remembered the ground hitting me again and again.

Teen Angst? Naaah... (2000)

And here's a longer, more complex snippet:

One of my earliest memories of drums came a little later than that, on Christmas Eve 1973. It’s probably my earliest memory in general, and it’s blurry around the edges, but I remember the center of it: waking up in bed that night and going downstairs to find a toy drum kit, a xylophone, a keyboard, and a toy guitar by the tree.

Mo’ Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove(2013)

Highlighters

Writelike is all about learning to write by copying the techniques of other writers. One way we often do this is by highlighting useful patterns or mechanics in a snippet.

You'll see the next snippet has a set of highlighters and a button that says Show Our Highlighting.

Try this:

If you click Show Our Highlighting, you'll see the snippet text highlighted.
Point your mouse at the highlights to see which is which (helpful if you're colourblind!).
Notice that the button underneath now says Show Your Highlighting. That will make more sense in a moment. For now, click it to revert back to the blank snippet.

I had gone skiing once when I was eight. I remembered the ground hitting me again and again.

Teen Angst? Naaah... (2000)

You can also apply the highlighters yourself. This is useful if you are trying to figure out the pattern for yourself or you are debating the highlighting in a class.

Try this:

Select a highlighter below and drag your cursor across some of the text inside the snippet. The text should be highlighted.
Select another highlighter and highlight a different piece of text. You'll see you can apply each highlighter individually.
Click Show Our Highlighting. You'll see our highlighting, all applied.
Click Show Your Highlighting. You'll see your highlighting, unchanged. You can toggle between these views.
Click on one of your highlights. The highlight should disappear—that's how you erase your own highlighting if you want to change something.

Try applying the highlighters yourself.

Note that you can’t apply highlighting across

paragraph breaks. You need to apply the highlight to each individual paragraph. (This often comes up in poetry snippets.)

You can tap a highlighted section to clear it. (Try that now.)

Note that we don’t save highlighting you apply to a snippet like this. We do save it when you highlight your own writing (which we’ll do below).

Writelike

Note that these highlighters are just a tool: they're not usually an "exercise" as such. You won't get any kind of score or right/wrong feedback out of this part of the process.

Worked examples

Having highlighted an interesting and useful pattern, we will usually give you one or more worked examples of how that pattern can be applied to different content.

Below is a snippet followed by a worked example that follows the same high-level structure, but talks about dogs instead of snippets.

Note that you can use highlighters on examples just like how you would on the original snippet. (And also note that worked examples have blue backgrounds.)

This is a snippet. It's a genuine piece of text that someone has written for a specific purpose. You can click "Show our highlighting" below to see the pattern they used. Or you can try to identify the pattern yourself by clicking a highlighter above and dragging your mouse over the relevant span of text.

Writelike

This is a dog. Dogs are domesticated animals that enjoy playing. You could throw a ball for it to chase after. Or you might like to try a game of tug-of-war, with you holding one end of a piece of rope and the dog holding the other.

Inspiration images

Once you've had time to read a snippet and worked examples, and study the highlighted features in both, we'll usually get you to write something using the same pattern.

To make it easier to think of something to write about, we might give you an inspiration image, such as this one:

Cat in wizards clothes in a stone brick room with occult furnishings and little spirits. There are various button icons: a paw print, a stack of cards with a crescent moon on the back, a cog, a book, and a health tracker.

You can use the image to get ideas for what to write about, but you don't have to.

Textboxes

Finally, we'll give you a textbox in which to write your own variation.

Try this:

The snippet and worked example above are about describing how to use something. Use the inspiration image to get an idea for something you can describe how to use.
Then write your own variation using the same pattern. You can look at the snippet, the worked example, and the highlighters to help you.
If you want to check that you have actually followed the pattern, apply highlighters to what you wrote. That highlighting will be saved with your writing when you click Next below.

Important!
To save your work, you need to click Next. Don't worry if you haven't quite finished whatever exercise you're doing—you can always come back to it later. But it's important to click Next so that you don't lose what you've done!

It's possible to do these activities by writing nonsense words that still fit the pattern. You'll get more out of the lessons by trying to write something real, though.

Write your response here.

Saving your work

Once you've written something in the textbox, you will be able to click Next which will save your writing and take you to the next page.

If you have blank textboxes, the Next button won't work
If you close this window or use the Back button, you'll lose your writing—it only saves when you click Next!

Try this:

Click Next and then come back to this page. You should see your writing is still here, along with any highlighting you applied.
Try changing your text. You'll find you can edit your text, but you'll need to reapply any highlighting.

How to Writelike ARCHIVED 210112