Writing Exercises?

[Lindon Tinuviel]

What have been the most rewarding exercises you've used? They can be from high school or college classes, on-line seminars, or just stuff you made up.

One that taught me more about writing than any other single assignment occurred in college. Our professor told us to write a two- to three-thousand word story involving a crime. The main character had to be a man named John, and John had to have a pet.

When we were done, we were told to rewrite the story from the pet's point of view.

Easy enough. Most of the class had used a dog or a cat as the pet, and our rewritten stories involved much yapping and yowling and panting, along with a good bit of nonchalant licking. One poor sod, though, had written John's pet as a goldfish.

While our dogs and cats were sniffing out evidence and secretly tracking down the real killers/thieves/jaywalkers, the guy with the goldfish turned his story into nothing less than pure dark-comedy gold.

I can't post the story because I didn't write it (and I don't have a copy of it anyway), but let me tell you--that was one funny fish. The fish's commentary on human nature was wry and dismissive and frequently little more than blowing a bubble, but the timing was spot-on perfect.

What that taught me is that whenever you write yourself into a corner--who could tell a decent story about a goldfish?--you can write yourself out of it again. I don't remember a third of what I wrote all those many years ago, but I remember that guy's fish.

 

[sunstruckdream]

Last year, after realizing my inability to kill off any character I liked, I crafted a story with the sole purpose of needing the narrator to be dead by its end. I wrote the whole thing - it's actually one of my favorite pieces - but when it came time to kill my MC, I really, REALLY didn't want to do it. It was essential to the story, so I did. And since I put that exercise of sorts on myself, I've found myself more able to do what's best for the story in my writing instead of going all control-freak and pushing things in directions that feel forced or false. Similarly, as I absolutely used to LOATHE present-tense narration, I wrote a few short stories using it just to better understand it and get a feel for it. It's still not my preferred method of writing, but I no longer tremble at its mention.

Lindon, that goldfish thing is actually really interesting! What I wouldn't give to read that and see how it played out!

 

[Axioma]

Here's one I've attempted and failed - I need to retry it soon.

Write 100 short stories in 100 days. Let each story be no longer than 600 words. It doesn't matter what they're about, just that they are stories.

 

[Twich]

A couple of my favorites are similar to the story about the goldfish above and they came from one of my favorite television writers. One was that at the end of every season, David Kemper would write the season ender to Farscape into an impossible conclusion. He'd kill off a character, strand them someplace - do something amazing. And then he'd look at Ricky Manning and say "Okay. Get them out of it. Logically." I've enjoyed doing the same on some of my favorite season enders even if it is just a fanfic for myself.

The other suggestion was that one time David Kemper had writer's block. He had a scene and he knew how he wanted it to play out, but for some reason, he couldn't get it there. He really struggled over making it happen - and then one day, he decided to 'flip' it. He switched the places of the two main characters. Instead of the story playing out with the woman killing the man - it flipped to the man killing the woman. It was incredible. He said that it opened up everything creatively and allowed for a more powerful scene - even though it wasn't originally what he'd wanted. Seeing it from the other angle made it work better. I liked that concept. A lot!

In college one of my writing profs in college had us write a short story and then do a rewrite with a completely different tool. Poetry. News story. Biography. Essay. It's a great cure for writer's block.

 

[Subdood]

Some good stuff here!

One thing I like to do is dialogue. It can be anything - two people in a restaurant, someone speaking on a phone and filling in the other person's dialogue - extending a discussion over lunch at work - imagining what two people are talking about across a crowded room, or on a park bench, or in an airplane - or getting a photo of someone looking at the camera and creating a dialogue between them and a third person behind you or someone behind the cameraman. Dialogue from an inanimate object is good too.

 

[Worcester Beacon]

One of the methods I've used is an old technique, have a list of subjects, make them up or get someone to do it for you. Then write for at least 3 minutes on that subject, quite often you will get carried away and go way beyond the time. This method will work for poetry too.

 

[Subdood]

In that vein (good, btw ) one exercise I do that incorporates lists is that I keep (and build on over time) lists of various things - people, professions, places, animals, etc. from which I then randomly select an item from each list and write something incorporating each of those items.

For example:
- Teacher
- The Eiffel Tower
- An orange
- Sunset

 

[Subdood]

I've another exercise that I do as I edit stuff on which I'm working - which is to try to describe something without telling the reader explicitly (or in an overtly obvious way) what I'm describing. This came from a teacher of mine some time ago (a long time ago ) in a creative writing class about what NOT to write. For example, we were talking about the very familiar opening, "It was a dark and stormy night..." She had us write in one paragraph or less something that conveyed a dark and stormy night without using any of those words.

In other words - the exercise is to write about something without using any of the obvious descriptors or words normally associated with that thing.

For example - "It was about four o-clock in the afternoon when he returned to his car" could become "His car now cast a shadow over the pothole he'd hit earlier" (Sorry, just off the top of my head).