Writing Exercises

Writing Tips/ Questions and Answers

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Pet Peeves and Words to Avoid
Dear Visitor,
     I am a veteran teacher of writing from university level to little kids. I offer these writing exercises in the spirit of the Internet as a place for a new kind of community of sharing and exchange. I call them "exercises" rather than "prompts" or "lessons" because I think of them as ways to strengthen the writing muscles that you already have and as ways to expand your range of techniques. The execises are free, but if you want to give something back, please read some of my online fiction or take a look at my books. I also offer suggestions for small and tiny press books that you might want to read or purchase as gifts: see giftbooks. I also teach private classes online as well as public classes at New York University's School of Continuing and Professional Studies, and, finally, I have a free newsletter you can get by sending your e-mail address to: 
                                                                                -- Meredith Sue Willis

 

Current Exercise

 

 

Hearts and flowers! Much selling of anything chocolate, red, heart shaped! Write a memory or a story or a scene or a poem with a heart in it. This does not, by the way have to be serious. Nor does it have to celebrate love.

I remember my boyfriend who didn't have much money and offered to cook dinner for me-- and sautéed three quarters of a pound of chicken hearts-- small, rubbery, and a sort of purply gray color.

And also my first grade Valentine's exchange when I got cards for everyone in my class- except the boy who liked me so much he gave me a 5 & 10 cent store diamond ring. I didn't mean to skip him-- I thought. But was it a Freudian slip? Can you have a Freudian slip when you are six years old?

 

 

More writing exercises below and in archives.

 

 

 

More Writing Exercises here and below:

Exercises 1- 20

Exercises 21- 40

Exercses 41 - 60

Exercises 61-80

Exercises 81-100

Exercises 101 - 120

Exercises 121 - 140

Exercises 141 - 160

Exercises 161 - 180

Exercises 181 - 200

 

Writing Hints

  • More Grammar: check out this blog post by Maria Murnane.
  • Do you know Grammar Girl? This grammar blog is terrific on how to use practical, graceful grammar and punctuation. Here she is on the ... ellipsis: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/ellipsis.aspx
  • Two interviews where I talk about writing: Creative Writing Now and one by Tricia Idrobo with me on Writing and Illustrating: Sharing Information about Writing and Illustrating for Children . Both sites have a lot of good information.
  • In typing in corrections to a manuscript, and I decided to do it in reverse order, or at least Chapter 21 followed by Chapter 20 followed by Chapter 19 etc. It feels uncomfortable, but keeps my focus on the sentences and words. To read in order is to get swept up in story-- ideal for a reader and for the writer as she drafts!-- but it means you tend to skip little rough spots and even outright errors. So even though this isn't the most fun, it is a good technique, IMHO.
  • Check out Jessica Murphy's piece on avoiding Gawking Characters at Inspiration for Writers, Inc.
  • The biggest hint of all is to find a time in your life for regular writing. It doesn't matter if it's every day or every week-end or six weeks in the summer-- you need a period of time you can depend on. You may also occasionally get an inspiration that sends you rushing off to your notebook or computer, and that is great, but it is an extra-- a gift from the universe! To edit and revise and continue and finish work, you'll need that regular place and time.
  • Separate your critical brain from your drafting brain. Try writing at least three paragraphs (or even better, three pages) before you go back and fiddle with the words. If possible, don't read over what you wrote today until tomorrow or at least after lunch. It will be much easier to make changes.
 
 
Questions and Answers

Q: I'm confused about when I can use contractions. Right now I'm using them everywhere except in summations and narratives. But someone told me I should only use contractions in dialogue. Is there any rule?

 

A: Definitely use contractions in dialogue, because it's how we speak, but fiction is a generally informal type of writing, and I'm quite sure I use contractions in my narration as well as within quotation marks. I believe the way to think of it is as another tool: if I wanted to slow down a passage of narration or create a formal tone, then I might well write: "I would slow it down.." But if my authorial tone is lighter, and I want speed, I might write "I'd speed it up with contractions." No hard and fast rule in novel writing, except that normal people in dialogue tend to use contractions.

 

 

Q: I have a question about copyright - namely, what do I do to protect my work if I want to show it to someone else, but it hasn't been published yet? Is there a way to do that?

 

A: About copyright: you own your writing by the act of writing it. You own the copyright, whether you've done anything official or not. Here's some information , but the bottom line is that you own what you've written, and fiction is rarely stolen– what you don't own and can't copyright is your idea– that is, someone else can do a similar plot and you can't do anything about it.

 

 

Q: How do you punctuate titles? It seems like I do it differently every time!

 

A: Here's a great discussion of that on Grammar Girl at http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/capitalizing-titles.aspx

 

 

Q: How do you use quotation marks in dialog when the
character is telling something about the past and quotes someone else talking?

 

A: The usual way is to use single quotes inside regular double quotes. So you'd have: Jane said, "I was rushing to the office when I ran into Frank, and he said, 'Janie, I've got some bad news!' "


 

Q: What do you do when you've written different endings and like none of them? I keep telling myself something will come, something I haven't thought about, but so far it hasn't.

 

A:I usually think in terms of hypothetical endings. I'll do a whole draft of a book and know that the end is weak, but at least I've had the satisfaction of writing “The End.” Then I'll lay it aside for perhaps a couple of months, then go over it from the beginning, and plunge on through. Of course, I may end up with another imperfect ending, but when I've finally made enough drafts, I usually have finally found the "real" ending, or at least the real stopping place.

 

 

Q: How do I create realistic characters? I'm not striving to write great literature. I want to write a thriller, and I'm best at action and suspense.

 

A: People who take my writing classes tend to fall into one of two categories. Some start with characters and have trouble finding stories for them; and some start with plots and have trouble with characters! It sounds like you are one of the second group. One good trick is to write back stories for your main characters-- mini biographies (or even a resumé!). Try to figure out the person's age, where they grew up, education level, ethnic background, what they want out of life, what their favorite food is-- all kinds of details, that might be useful in your story, too. Here's a list to get you started.

Also check out this advice from Writer's Digest about motivation and the arc of change in a character.

 

 

Q. What about verb tense? The present tense is so much more dynamic. I am using past tense as in a story telling mode. Which is better in fiction?

A. I use the present tense sometimes, but it isn't my favorite. I like it best for very short pieces. In general, especially for longer works, I prefer the plain old story teller’s past myself. There are plenty of good books and good writers, though, that use the present tense extremely well. So, on the one hand, good writers make anything work. On the other hand, a lot of younger writers use the present tense because it is something of a fad. Take a look at http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/materials.html#presenttense for some thoughts on pros and cons.

 

Q. What about working on two novels simultaneously?

 

A. This, like many other things, depends on you. When I get stuck, I go on to a new project, so I often have two or even more books and a couple of stories and articles going at once. I also trust that I'll be able to get back to the things I've left.

 

Q. I'm writing a novel and having a hard time with technology. Do I include cell phones? IM? Facebook? Twitter?

 

A. That's a tough one. The clearest way to deal with it in my opinion is to consider every novel a historical novel, even if it is set in 2009. Make sure you have the right technology for the year. There are also lots of tricks-- your character can be the kind of person who always misplaces her cell phone or lets it run down, for example.

 

 

Q: I have my first paid writing gig. It's for an online travel website. Do you think it's unusual or bad that they own all future rights to the article, or is this standard?  From their website: Publication Rights: We are only interested in articles that aren’t yet published, and we own all future rights to the paid pieces you publish through us. If you prefer to maintain future rights, please submit your article through unpaid articles program.

 

A: Writing for Hire  (which is what you're describing-- the publisher owns the rights) is not great, but it's totally common.  In other words, it's done a lot, especially with nonfiction, but also with some things like popular series books for kids that have different authors for each volume.  It's not a scam, just not ideal.  What I have done in such circumstances is to write a separate version of the piece, longer or shorter, maybe fiction instead of nonfiction, or using different examples to make the same point, or whatever, if I want to use it again. They can't buy your ideas and experience, just the words you've written.

 

 

 

 

 

Pet Word Peeves...

There are certain words that get misused a lot-- one is the word "heft," which means most often, weight or heaviness, or sometimes importance or influence. But a lot of people use it in what is really a rare and archaic way, as if it meant "bulk." A lot of students write, "He lifted his considerable heft out of the chair." It ought to be "He lifted his considerable bulk out of the chair." Correct uses are "The heft of a good hammer" or "Some synthetic fabrics are nice and warm, but I prefer wool because it has more heft." The word is a related to "heave," on the same pattern as "weave" and "weft."

 

Another word that irks me when it is misused is "smirk." This is a verb I would only use if I really didn't like a character or really didn't like a character's attitude at that moment. The dictionary definition (quoted from the Houghton Mifflin eReference) is "to smile in an affected, knowing way." Sometimes when writers really want a character to grin or smile humorously, they use "smirk," and it always sets my teeth on edge.

 

There are also certain words and phrases, all perfectly good English, that I avoid in my writing. I find that I have in the past overused them, probably because I actually like them. One word I have sworn off is “shard.” "Shard" sounds like what it is, a broken piece of something, but I’ve come to over-use it. It seemed like every time a glass broke or sun was refracted through a window in my prose, I would call it “shards of glass” or, metaphorically, “shards of light.”

 

I also avoid certain phrases I used to love as a beginning writer: "visibly shaken" was one I used to look for excuses to use, as in "When she heard him say her name, she was visibly shaken." When I was a child, I adored "gathered up her skirts!"  That's got to be what Cinderella did when she fled the Ball, and I was always looking for excuses to have someone gather up her skirts and run away.  Do you have such words and phrases on your personal Avoid list?

 

 

One member of my writers' peer group can't stand the word "quotidian," which she says no one uses in real life. We were critiquing a novel-in-progress of mine, and another group member said, yes, but that word was used in context in the voice of a character who likes big words. This was an interesting case: no one disputed that a pretentious character can, in quoted dialogue, use words I wouldn't use myself, to fit the personality. But how about in the close third person, as in this novel, where the diction slips between the author's words and the words a character might use or think?

 

More

 
 

 

Exercise # 201

 

Whenever I am short of material for my writing, or just looking for something to jump-start my imagination, I try writing about something extremely commonplace.

For example, write something with a dog in it. This could be a dog seen skulking among the garbage cans behind a restaurant, or it could be a beloved pet from childhood. It could be a pink poodle appliquéed to a nineteen fifties circle skirt. Just so it is a dog or something that resembles a dog.

Someday I'm going to write about my mother and dogs. She will cross streets to see them and she carries dog treats just in case. Here's a picture of her, Lucille, with a dog named after her, Lulu:

 

 

Exercise #202

I've been discovering the guilty pleasure of genre novels. Do you have a favorite genre? Mysteries? Romance? Sword and Sorcery fantasy? What's yours? Most of these capture us with their quality of "and then...and then...what next?...and then.." In other words, most of the best genre novels grab us with their stories.

Take some anecdote or journal entry or story or even a poem you have written in the past-- the more distant the better-- and try writing a little of it in the style of your favorite genre. If you have to insert vampires into a love poem, that's fine. Just see how it goes.

 

 

 

 

Exercise #203

 

I was recently inspired by the excellent use in a George R.R. Martin sword and sorcery novel of multiple points of view. I decided to add more points of view to a novel I'm drafting, and I'm very pleased to have the new people represented. I've had what I think is an important insight, that a brief passage in a character's mind can act as an insight, a quick flash, that I don't have to know everything about the character from the inside, especially as other characters observe this one too.

Can you think of some quality or technique you admire in your favorite type of genre writing? Maybe the suspense of a mystery or the action sequences of a thriller?

Turn to something you've written recently, even if it's something lyrical or in the form of memory, and add a passage that uses something your admire from genre novels. An action scene would be a good choice, or perhaps a summary of the past, the way science fiction often has to bring a reader up to speed date on the invented history of the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exercise #204 

It's the beginning of a new year, so it is appropriate, if not clichéd thinking, to consider new beginnings. January 1 is not, of course, the new year for all cultures, and for people like me who were part of a school teaching family, the fall return to school always felt like the real beginning of new things.

But, for this exercise, let's stay with the conventional Western New Year and write a new beginning to an old story or chapter or scene.

Pull something out of your files and give it a new opening paragraph. Try for an entirely different approach or perhaps even a new point of view.

If you don't feel like going back to the old text that follows, keep going on the new thing.

 

 

 

 

Exercise #205

This is a pretty direct exercise. Write the dialogue (and anything else you want) that goes with this movie scene. (For the Novel it comes from, click here.)

 

 

Exercise #206

 

Put a piece of fruit in your writing. Begin by visualizing it with your senses (its smell, its heft, its color and shape, etc.), and then go anywhere you want with it.

Here's an example from one of my in-process manuscripts. I wrote this exercise in a class once, and used it this way:

He reached over the table to take my hand. His wrist had passed too close to the food, and there was one grain of rice stuck to his wrist bone. "I have something for you," he said. I had this awful cringe that it was going to be a ring, but no, out of the canvas newsboy bag he'd been carrying, he pulled a white box stamped with a fancy gift shop name.

I opened it, pushed aside the crumpled paper, and found an utterly simple utterly splendid crystal pear.

"It's a paperweight," he said, "but it seemed clean and strong, like you."

He really was a darling. I held it in both hands, a perfect pear, a lovely pear, heavy-bottomed like me, a pear resting in my hands, the stem incised lightly in the top, a hint of abstraction against the fullness of the fruit.

"Martha," he said, cupping his hands around my hands around the crystal pear, "you have made such a difference in my life. I know you only love me in a certain way. But love is love, if it's real, when there's so little time."

"So little time for what, Robby? Who said there's so little time?"

"I don't know. I didn't mean that." His eyes were raking over my face, very wide, wetness in them making him glitter. "There's so little time because it all changes so fast."

 

 

 

 

Exercise #207

 

Below is a lovely little passage of one character reacting to another character's feet from Kiran Desai's Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard. Try writing a passage about feet, or with feet in it. The feet may be an adult's feet, baby's feet, ugly feet, cooked chicken feet-- just feet. Here's the example, but yours could be entirely different.

Sampath was transfixed. Miss Jyotsna kicked her feet up in the air. (What red toenails! Jewel-like, beetle-like, beautiful red toenails!) His ears felt as if they'd been dusted with a light coating of paprika

(Kiran Desai, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, (New York: Anchor, 1998) p. 31.)

 

Exercise #208

 

Write a scene with physical force in it. It might be police and a shoplifter or an army and demonstrators. It might be physical force for someone's own good. For an example of this, read the short story The Use of Force." This brief story, probably autobiographical, is by the poet and pediatrician by poet William Carlos Williams.

 

 

Exercise #209

 

Read this contemporary short story by Margaret Atwood, "Happy Endings." Using it as a model, write a story about a relationship that gives various alternative versions, or at least alternative endings.

 

 

 

Exercise #210

In Vermont they call it "mud season," but I am always struck by the clean lines of March: the branches swept of all leaves, so that, looking out my window into my back yard, it appears that we are living in a zone of lace.
Write a March story. It may have something to do with college basketball or the weather, or Julius Caesar, but get something seasonal into a passage of fiction, personal narrative or poetry.

 

 

 

Exercise #211

 

Are you having trouble with plot in your novel or other prose narrative? Try this exercise: think of your characters and incidents and setting, then sketch out briefly some of these scenarios:

 

1. Write a paragraph making up a mystery plot using your people, setting and time span.

 

2. Do the same thing, but sketch out the plot of a spy thriller: it doesn't have to be Russia and USA spies, it could be industrial spies, or local pizza parlors looking for secret sauce, or whatever. The point is to imagine your material in this form.

 

3. Do it again, but as a romance: couple meets, are separated by circumstances, misunderstandings, have to overcome obstacles, happy ending.

 

4. Choose any other genre you know a little about and write a paragraph sketching the story using your material.

 

 

The point of this is not to turn your idea into genre, but to see if there is some element in a genre version that might help you form your plot: Does your love story need more obstacles? Is there a mystery (not necessary a murder) or a quest that is implicit in what you've written, but that you might heighten and emphasize for plot?

 

 

 

 

Exercise #212

Exercises Using Celebrities
In one of my writing classes we started talking about celebrity lives, and what celebrities mean in the culture of the United States. Here are some exercises to try:

 
 

Exercise #213

 

One good way to write poetry is to imitate poems you like, so you might want to sign up for a Poem-a-Day or look at Halvard Johnson's Poetry Blog

Meanwhile, I have been composing haiku as I do my exercise with my Nordic walking sticks. Haiku works nicely because they are short (and I have to memorize what comes to me when I'm walking). Also, the syllable counting seems to go nicely with physical movement-- and, along with the 5-7-5 syllable format, the other standard requirements for haiku are nature (I'm out-of-doors) and a little surprise. So I recommend taking a walk, counting out a haiku for yourself and memorizing it to bring back to the pencil and paper or keyboard. Here are a couple of mine (no laughing--I'm primarily a novelist):

 

Palest green scumble,
Tan fluff and small maroon buds--
It's haiku season!
Realm of green below,
Yellow, purple, pink between–
Over head, it's red!
 

 

 

 

Exercise #214

 

    

Read this passage from a novel-in-progress by Elizabeth Derby:

 

 

... I've never been this dedicated to my writing before. It's amazing how easily the words flow, how real the characters seem to me. When people talk about the 'muse', this must be what they mean. I feel like I have a waterfall of stories inside of me, the shapes and details so real, and they're constantly flooding against the dam of my daily life. I feel them gather with greater and greater force, spreading through my mind, my eyes, until they fill everything, my thoughts, my eyelids when I close them. If I don't open the gate as frequently as possible, I'm truly afraid I will drown....

 

 

Write a passage in which you describe what it feels like when your writing is going really well.

How about when it's going badly?

Can you do the two versions in the form a a free verse poem?

 

 

Exercise #215
Using Stereotypes

 

This is one to do with a friend, or in a group or class. All participants write on a slip of paper a typical or even unacceptably stereotypical character (Martini slurping WASP guy? Complaining old lady? Asian with a camera?). Everyone passes to the right, and then, using the stereotype you received, write a fuller, deeper, more "rounded" or surprising version that turns the typical into a real character.

Here's a sample by Daria Solovieva:

 

 

Giggling Asian Girl with Camera

 

She snapped the photographs laughing, covering her mouth as she laughed, which made it hard to hold the camera steady, so she had to ask again. "Step please more to side– next flowers please? Thank you very much thank you!" Then more laughing till she almost dropped the camera again, and they rolled their eyes over the silly foreigner. "You are so real Americans!" she exclaimed between bursts of hilarity. "You make my picture American. Move please over more thank you more thank you!"

It was a white light day, sun rays vertical, tree branches bare and whitened, so much light and nothing to obscure the details which would show up very nice thank you thank you!

Her hands were almost too cold to press the shutter button, and she was very tired of showing her teeth in a Western smile, but she could feel success. This was her destiny, to frame stupid condescending Americans but, as she pressed the button, move the camera to the left, capture the entrance to the target instead, then its low first storey windows, then the alley to the right with the simple padlock on the gate.

The pictures would come out very well....

 

 

 

 

Exercise #216

Write a monologue for a person you have observed but never actually spoken to. Begin by writing a short physical description of the person, then write what is going through the person's mind. This might be memories or stream-of-consciousness--whatever comes to you.

Do a second version in which the person is saying this aloud, directly to you (or to your main character). What is the situation? Who initiated the conversation? How much of it works as a monologue-in-dialogue, and how much do you need to adjust or change? Remember, when people are talking, one often speaks at length-- that is totally natural, to tell another person a story.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exercise #217

 

 

What is she thinking? What is she drinking?

 

 

 

 

 

Exercise #218

 

Vampires have been extraordinarily popular in recent years, especially in popular narratives both in novels and in cinema. Try to put a vampire in something you're writing: a story or a poem or even your memoir. This can, of course, be a joke about a vampire or a reference to Bela Lugosi or any other way you can find to meet the challenge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exercise #219

 

At a recent writers' conference, I visited a session where we were asked, as an exercise in thinking about texts that are not written and read, to make a list of phrases or lines of songs or religious quotations or catch phrases, or anything else that we just carry around in our heads.

Try this. On a sheet of paper, make a list, as quickly as you can, at least ten of them. Mine included:

 

She gathered up her skirts... (like Cinderella fleeing the      ball)
What is, is (something a fried of mine often says)
He has a lot on his plate (Something another friend says)
My luv's like a red red rose (Line of Renaissance poetry,      Herrick I believe)
Reader, I married him.. (line from Victorian literature-- Jane      EyreI)
In my father's house are many Mansions
Consider the lilies of the field..Solomon in all his glory is not arrayed lie one of these. (last two roughly quoted from      King James Christian Bible
Women were born to suffer (something my mother      sometimes said to my  continuing distress!)

Use one of mine or even better, one of your own as the opening line. Write for at least fifteen minutes, whatever comes next: a poem, a bit of memoir, the opening of a story...

(Thanks to Professor Amy Wright)

 

 

 

Exercise #220

 

The heat is on here in the Northeast in Summer 2011. Make a list of heat words.

 

blistering

grill

cooking

boiling

red-hot...

 

Now pick ten of your favorites and use them in a short essay, poem, or flash fiction story.

 

 

 

 

Exercise #221

 

One of the most amazing things fiction can do is explore the inner life of characters. This is part of the richness of reading fiction, but going inside out characters is also one of the best ways to get deeper information about characters as you write.

Try writing "confessions" for five very different people in the form of internal monologues. These might be characters in a novel or story you're writing, or just five people who interest you. Do each of them in the first person, and have them "confess," not to something bad, but just the truth as they see it.

 

 

 

Exercise #222

 


After the Storm at the Lake

It's vacation again, and we delight in lovely weather, are dissatisfied when the weather is stormy and stops our planned picnic or bike ride.

Write a passage describing a storm you remember, and then, either as memoir or fiction, tell what happened during or after the storm: do the lovers find themselves alone after running for shelter in a garage or barn? Is the garden party spoiled? Do people take of their shoes and dance in the puddles?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exercise #223

 

The last writing exercise was about storms and weather-- and that was before the East Coast of the U.S. was hit with an enormous Hurricane that did tremendous damage! Electricity was out for many people; others had to stay in shelters or go without hot water or other things we assume are a normal part of everyday life.

Write a scene from your real life or a fictional scene in which a group of people is in some way deprived of the usual amenities we think we have to have. It could be a cabin with the road washed out or a Red Cross shelter, or simply an ordinary home that temporarily has no Internet access or television. How do people act? What do they do? Are there conflicts, either funny or serious?

 

 

 

 

Exercise #224

 

 


 

"I am writing to say...."

(1) Continue this story.

(2) Continue it again-- using a different mode of writing from your ordinary one. That is, if you usually draft on a keyboard, write in a small notebook or vice versa.

How different are the two? Does the mode of writing come into the plot or story line? Can you make it?

 

 

Exercise #225

Good parody requires a knowledge and appreciation of the style you are parodying. Here's a funny old Onion piece called "Ask Raymond Carver," which makes the late short story writer into an advice columnist. Carver is a wonderful writer, but his stories are often full of quotidian events, tensions between men and women, and drinking.

Pick a writer you really admire and feel you could learn from, and write at least a paragraph of parody. That is, try a paragraph in the same style as your writer, but go to extremes. If you choose Hemingway, make many, many short declarative sentences. And don't forget the bullfight!

 

 

 

Exercise #226

Write a short story or anecdote in which a person tells the story of their life. You can put yourself or another character in the piece to receive the story, but focus on the teller. "Did you ever wonder how I got this scar?" or " I always wanted to be a doctor." A beautiful example is Grace Paley's story, "A Man Told Me the Story of His Life."

 

 

 

Exercise #227

 

"The man was walking down a deserted street around two a.m., having just left the corner bar. He moved quickly but unsteadily. Suddenly, out of an alley came three boys. They grabbed him and dragged him behind a garbage toter and began to..."

Try re-writing this passage in a close third person point of view. Concentrate on how the world looks to the man. What does he feel physically when he is "grabbed and dragged?" Are there smells? What sounds? This is an exercise in imagining a bad experience the way a person feels it, and it's harder than you may think.

 

 

 

 

 

Exercise #228

 

In honor of Halloween and the important technique of using internal monologue to explore character, write a description of your favorite monster-- Count Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, Freddy Kruger-- whoever you like-- and write the monster's own version of events....

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exercise #229

 

 

Write about a time you experienced some natural event that causes hardship-- a powerful blzzard or a freak snowstorm in spring or fall. Was your power out for many days? An earthquake? A hurricane or tornado? Write as much as you can of the details of what the experience was like, how you and others coped.

Write again, fictionalizing. Keep the remembered details, but change your age or circumstances, or take yourself out of it and put in a character. Change the ending....

 

Exercise #230

Write something with a child and a dog in it. This has the potential to be sickly-sweet-sentimental: don't let it be! Write a real memory from your own life, or a real observation.

I read an article in today's New York Times in which a scientist-mother observed her two year old son and their four year old dog for a week, trying to figure out who was smarter....

 

 

 

 

Exercise #231

Someone gives you or a character a gift. You or the character don't want this gift. Maybe the giver is someone you love, but the gift is old fashioned or inappropriate. Or, maybe, the gift is exactly what you want, but you don't like the giver or the way it is given. Describe the circumstances, then tell what happens.

 

 

Exercise #232

 

As you come home one evening, there is a sound of a cat mewing (or substitute domestic animal of your choice: dog whining, parrot saying "hello," etc.). You look around and see...

 

 

 

Exercise #232

 

'Tis the season for lots of cooking--baking, party hors d'oeuvres, family feasts, and much much more. Write a scene- from your life, as part of your novel, as a start for a story (or as a start for you-know-not-what). Begin with someone cooking or baking, chopping or mixing egg nog. Include the steps for making the food in some detail. Even if you aren't a cook, imagine the steps of chopping vegetables for a raw salad plate or some task you know how to do.

As you write, let something happen. The character thinks about the people the food is being prepared for. A murder is planned-- maybe one stuffed pepper is poisoned. Or, perhaps the novice cook fails miserably-- or humorously.

Let the action of food preparation lead you to an idea or a memory.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exercise #233

 

 

It is the beginning of a new calendar year-- an arbitrary but useful point in time. This is an exercise about beginnings. Write a piece about a First Time: Some of these are obvious and popular: my first day in a new school; on a new job; first kiss etc. Feel free to write one of the standards for yourself or your fictional character, but also consider some more precise and unusual firsts: The first time I tasted cilantro. The first time I had to sing in public. My first toothache. Having my first baby, strike-out, etc. etc.

Notice that the first set of prompts leads to a narrative; the second set of prompts begins with the physical senses and leads-- where?

 

 

 

Exercise #234

 

We're approaching the holiday celebrating the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr. There are many famous black and white images of Dr. King and others during the Civil Rights era-- Dr. King speaking, hoses on demonstrators, the lunch counter sit-ins, Rosa Parks, etc.. Choose one of these images, and either from memory or from images on the internet (try clicking here, for example) describe the scene as fully and as objectively you can. Then expand or write again, imagining that you are a witness or participant.

 

 

Exercise #234

 

I was at my writers' peer group last night, discussing a member's story. We had an extremely lively discussion in which we respectfully disagreed with each other-- respectfully but very energetically.

The question centered on whether the story should be much shorter-- or much longer.

Try this: Take a piece of your own in-process writing-- a short story or scene or real life anecdote-- and try cutting it down by almost half.

Then try a version in which you double its length.

Obviously this is an arbitrary exercise, but I'm a strong believer that our creativity will often rise to the challenge. I know that rigorous cutting is almost always good for a piece of writing. Can expansion also be good?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the movie of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations.

 

 
 
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