Stealing sentences is not an effort at defrauding fellow writers of their intellectual property. It is a prompt to help writers create. There are lots of different ways of carrying out this type of exercise, and it is a useful idea when you are between articles, poems, or books. It also supports a bit of advice given to me when I first began writing almost twenty years. That was to write, doesn't matter what, just keep practising.
In fact, I have seen two versions of this exercise on 'tinterweb'. The first is a teaching aid.
Make a pile of strips of paper and coloured markers readily available. As you read stories aloud, encourage students to note sentences that ‘speak to them’. When a sentence resonates with a student he/she asks the teacher to stop, takes a strip of paper and a marker and writes down the sentence. This sentence is then attached to a noticeboard. During writing activities, students are encouraged to use these sentences, parts of the sentences or a modification of the sentences in their own writing.
The second is less prescriptive in that it involves picking a sentence from something you are reading and using it to create a paragraph. So much more of a random practice tool for an individual writer. It involves taking a sentence from something that you are reading and building a paragraph around that sentence.
For example,
I started writing this morning as usual, as part of a plan to write 1000 words a day and so produce a novel within six months. Having completed my first paragraph, a group of content related sentences, I realised that there was something wrong. I re-read the paragraph. Then I read it again. Initially, the paragraph seemed fine, but it wasn't balanced. Editing my work was never my favourite exercise but I persevered and read the paragraph aloud. This practice tends to pick out glaring mistakes. After that final effort, I realised there was a stolen sentence. However, I was working alone, so how had that happened?
Have a go, but whatever, keep writing.
God Bless
