Tonight my DH lent me John Gardiner's The Art of Fiction, which contains the aside: "Except to examine new techniques, or because of personal friendship, no serious apprentice should ever study second-rate writers." (Guilt.) Anyway.
Exercise 1. Write the paragraph that would appear in a piece of fiction just before the discovery of a body.
* 1
Lucy could smell the smouldering bonfire ahead of her, in the darkness as she picked her way over the boulders in her red heels. But any crackle from the pyre was drowned out by the crash of the waves. The air smelled of salt water and ash - his ash, she thought, atoms breathed in on who-knows-how-many planets scattered through time and space, released from Gallifreyan molecular configurations that would never occur in nature again.
* 2
A rustle from the direction of the bedroom made the Doctor look up from his morning paper. "Is that you, love? I've got a pot of coffee on: you can help yourself, if you like." A deep groan was all he heard by way of reply, and then a rumpled glimpse of pale skin and morning beard crossing the doorway on the way to the bathroom, and then the sound of the door creaking open and shut again. The sound of the water running, and then a loud crash and the water stopped. "Everything okay in there?" No answer. He knocked on the door, even though he never usually knocked. No answer. He opened it.
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pandacineaste
2 
3 
guilty