Article about msw
Biography
Commentary on msw's books
Interview with msw
Writing Exercises
With Meredith Sue Willis
Exercises 1 - 20 are here.
For Exercises 21 - 40 , click here.
For Exercises 41 through 60, click here.
Exercises 61-80
Exercises 81 - 100
Writing Exercises 101 - 120The newest exercises and other sources for writing ideas are here.
Exercise #1
Describe what you see in this photo. Describe what you don't see-- the interior. Describe the person who comes out of the place. What does the person do?
Exercise #2
Write a reflection or short fictional piece about this woman. Where is she? What year is it? What is she thinking? Try this in the form of an interior monologue.
[For those who like only the facts, ma'am, and want to know who she is, click here.]
Exercise #3
You meet a man in a bar in a strange town. He has a cat on his lap, and he orders a cup of coffee, slowly spoons sugar into it. He strokes the cat's black fur and says, "This contact is illusory. The cat and I are separated as though by a pane of glass, because man lives in time, in successiveness, while the magical animal lives in the present, in the eternity of the instant." What do you say back to him? And he to you? What does the cat do? What happened to this man before he came into the bar?
[for the source of the man with the cat in the bar, click here]
Exercise #4 You are in a waiting room (doctor's office, job interview, etc.). People are sitting more or less in a circle. Describe several of them -- focussing only on their feet! Type of shoes, cleanliness and condition of shoes, toes if they show, how they let their feet rest. Are they quiet or do the feet move? What can you tell about the person from the feet?
Exercise #5
The boys in the picture are marching off-- or are they? Who are they waving at? What will happen next?
Exercise #6
The chimpanzee is looking into your face. What is she trying to say? What is your response?
Exercise #7
Observe someone's hands (this can be in memory or imagination. Describe them as fully as possible. Notice shape, skin texture, any jewelry or disfiguration. What clues do these hands give you about the person's life?
Exercise #8
Take these lines from a well-known novel and continue them however you want:
She had found a jewel down inside herself and she had wanted to walk where people could see her and gleam it around.....
After you've written, if you really want to, click here to learn the source.
Exercise #9
What is the Parakeet saying to the Cat? And what is the reply?
After writing the dialogue, write the subtext-- what the animals really want or think-- or what the unseen human beings are thinking/doing.
Exercise # 10
Describe a food, using all your senses. Observe it visually, of course, but also include texture, smell and taste. Describe it again, but in a way that makes it disgusting: how a big juice steak, for example, must appear to a vegetarian.
Exercise 11
The room seems to have more shadow than substance, but you can see a staircase through the doorway. Suddenly, down the steps comes....
Exercise 12
One important part of fiction is the small physical gesture that can show so much about a character as well as make the scene jell in a reader's visual imagination. Here's a tiny snippet from Henry James's A Portrait of a Lady:
Madame Merle slowly seated herself, with her arms folded and her white hands arranged as a support to one of them and an ornament, as it were, to the other. She looked exquisitely calm, but impressively sad.
Write a closely observed description of a common gesture or physical action.
Exercise #13
Write a real life memory of a time you had a conflict with someone else. This might have been you with one of your parents, or you with a boss, or any other conflict that comes to mind.
Write the same scene again, but this time from the point of view of the other person.
Exercise #14
Write down an actual overheard telephone conversation - it might be someone in your family or a stranger on the train on his cell phone. I once overheard a man talking passionately with what seemed to be his girl friend - and then calling his wife to tell her what time he'd be home! After you've written the observed half of the conversation, write again, making up what the second person said.
Exercise #15
This Japanese court lady wrote a poem. Imagine you are the translator of her poem. Write it in English as prose or as poetry.
Here is one person's translation of it:
Field
Burnt-Over
My
body is like
A field wasted by winter.
If only I,
like the field burnt-over,
Awaited the return of spring
-- Lady Ise, Japanese Court Lady from 900's CE
Exercise #16
Write a word portrait of one of your great grandparents. All the better if you know only one tiny fact: that she lived in Scott County, Tennessee or that he came to the U.S. rather than be conscripted into the Czar's army. Perhaps this word portrait should be a short poem or the beginning of a short story.
Exercise #17
Dreams are very useful in fiction, as well as fun to write. Sometimes we use dreams to give verisimilitude– they are, after all, a part of life. They can also be used to show a character's mood or even to make a point, as a sort of allegory in the mind of a character. Write a dream for a character in a piece of fiction you are writing or planning.
Exercise #18
Imagine that you are lying in a hammock, gazing up the trunk of tree that
holds the hammock. You are profoundly relaxed; summer is almost over.
Your mind drifts with the slow rocking of the hammock. Your spirit
soars toward the top of the great white pine. Suddenly....
Exercise #19
Sit in your car or on a public bench and observe the people going in and out of a store or public building. Pick out one who catches your attention, and write about who you imagine that person is– where do they live? What are they like? Where are they going next?
Exercise #20
Think of an important event in your life or in a project you are writing. Write the weather for the day it happened. This may require closing your eyes, counting down from ten, trying to empty your mind– whatever works for you to become focused. This exercise, of course, is not just about the weather, but about going deeper into the past by using the sense details of what it felt like to be in that place at that time
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