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Posts from the ‘Writing Exercises’ Category

Jun 26

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Practice your storytelling technique through the eyes of a child

When meeting a new person, sometimes I mention that I used to be shy but now I can’t shut up. Though I say this jokingly, it’s true. When I quit my job and went to work for myself years ago, I had to break out of my shyness in order to survive and eventually thrive out there in the big, bad world.

I modeled people who seemed to be naturally outgoing. It took years of practice to overcome my shyness and even now, after being in my own little writing world for too long, it’s an easy mode to slip back into.

On a recent trip, I was forced to be around people and so practiced being my outgoing, extrovert self again. One way I did this was through storytelling. Read more

Jun 20

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Use character emotions to show vs. tell

The golden rule in writing, “Show, don’t tell,” is something I try to follow most of the time. The only time I use “telling” is for transitions, to speed up time, get from one place to another, or weave in necessary information. But when writing in scene, I try to evoke character feelings through “showing.”

Loud, neon emotions written flat on the page don’t convey anything except a writer’s immaturity and lack of craft. Read more

Jun 13

Learn about your characters by writing their obituaries

I don’t mean to sound morbid, but if you’re building characters for a short story or novel, I suggest you write their obituaries.

I’ve written a fair number of them over the years as a newspaper reporter, for members of my family, and to help friends who struggled with the words to honor a loved one who had passed away.

A good obituary is a tribute and a glimpse of a person’s life. As a journalist, I felt it was an honor to write obituaries even if I didn’t personally know the people I wrote about. Read more

May 29

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The key to building complex, realistic characters

Ever have one of those “aha” moments in your personal life that just rock your writing world? I love it when this happens.

Recently, while on vacation with my hubby, we were surfing channels late one night and ran across an old rerun of The Odd Couple with Tony Randall and Jack Klugman. The Odd Couple, in case you’re too young to remember, was a sit-com about two men Oscar, the slob, and Felix, the neat freak, and how they live together and drive each other crazy. We watched the episode and laughed more at how corny the show was than the jokes (but the jokes were pretty funny too).

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May 24

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If your boss vomits his bad mood on you, note the details in your journal

Today my boss barfed on me his unhappiness at having to come back from vacation. And of course, as my stomach clenched, I couldn’t help but think about what great material I was getting out of the situation.

As writers, we must suffer for our art. As my blood pressure climbed, I watched how his face turned scarlet – noting what was red from the sunburn he’d brought back from his vacation and what was due to his meltdown. Read more

May 18

Perfecting your first page and other inspiring ideas

Celebrate Friday with these tidbits of writing advice.

In Revealing Character through Details, Julie Eshbaugh at Publishing Crawl explains her philosophy about expressing character details in fiction and includes several examples.

Then, head over to writer and editor Jane Friedman’s blog to read Perfecting Your First Page: Three Tasks or Exercises.

May 10

A letter to writers from John Steinbeck

Does starting a story scare you? Maybe you put off putting pen to paper because of fear. John Steinbeck felt the same way.

In a letter to writers, Steinbeck wrote:

“It is not so very hard to judge a story after it is written, but, after many years, to start a story still scares me to death. I will go so far as to say that the writer who is not scared is happily unaware of the remote and tantalizing majesty of the medium.” Read more

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