posted
I've been taking an online creative writing class that has writing exercises. I find them very helpful; some of the other students don't.
The assignments are fairly simple. Some examples:
1. Show someone interacting with an animal. 2. Show character movements during dialogue. 3. Show danger in fifty words or less. 4. Show dignity. 5. Describe someone floating in a body of water.
Several of the assignments I have already turned into short stories, and several more have potential to be expanded in the future.
Some might feel that doing such assignments stifles your creativity, because you're just writing what someone else tells you to write.
For me, at least, that is not true. I mean, there are so many directions you can go from the starting point that there is plenty of room for creativity.
posted
How on earth did you turn any of those exercises into stories?
I can appreciate that doing a writing assignment doesn't "stifle your creativity" anymore than a portraiture class assignment to paint a student model would stifle the creativity of an artist working in a visual medium. Creativity, though, is not the point of the exercise. The point is developing the skill of portraying specific and varied topics, so that when you actually write a story in which apparent danger or floating people or animals or dialogue play a role, you will have some experience portraying them.
If a student finds it "helpful", this usually means that they find it enjoyable, whether or not it actually is "helping" them. Conversely, this means that those who don't find it "helpful" probably didn't find it enjoyable.
Paradoxically (and obviously), this probably means that those that didn't find it "helpful" are probably the ones most in need of practice portraying subjects selected by circumstances beyond their immediate whims. The fact that you "find them very helpful" and even like the results enough to regard them as being the seeds of a further creative endeavor strongly suggests that you don't really need much practice in showing such things, you can already do so with some confidence.
The real benefit of such exercises is felt by those that aren't yet comfortable (or completely confident) with the exercise, but are ready to ask for help from the instructor on how to accomplish the technical aspects, and further have a teacher willing and able to give helpful advice.
quote:How on earth did you turn any of those exercises into stories?
Part of it has do do with my particular strengths and weaknesses as a writer. I am pretty good at plotting (in my own opinion), but weaker at characterization and description.
So, when working on these assignments that address my weaknesses, I usually bring my strength in by coming up with a plot. (And since I'm an SF&F writer in a class not devoted to SF&F, I usually try to give the assignment that SF&F twist. Fortunately, my teacher doesn't have a problem with that. Of course, if he did, I wouldn't still be taking his class.)
In case anyone is interested, my creative writing teacher just started a free e-mail newsletter about writing that includes suggested writing exercises. You can sign up for the "Writing in Depth" newsletter by e-mailing calebwarnock (at) yahoo.com.
posted
Writer's Digest usually has exercises like these in it as part of a writer's calendar. The main benefit I find from this type of exercise is that it gets me over the "what will I write about" hump and forces me to put something down on a page.
One exercise that I’ve seen several books recommend is to pick up a badly written story of the ‘cheap dime-story variety’ and edit the first couple of paragraphs into something good. The goal being to improve your skills as an editor, so that you can self-edit your own work more effectively.
Along the same lines is to take an existing story and rewrite sections of it from another POV.
[This message has been edited by MaryRobinette (edited August 20, 2003).]
quote:How on earth did you turn any of those exercises into stories?
1. Show someone interacting with an animal.
Why is he interacting with the animal? What sort of interaction is it? What kind of animal is it? What kind of person? Does the person fear the animal? Does the animal fear the person? Is it the person's animal, or someone else's? If someone else's, what motivation does the person have in interacting with it? What does the animal's owner think of this interaction? In general? In specific? Is the animal normally considered dangerous? Is it dangerous? Is the person really in danger? Is the person provoking it? Does the animal enjoy it? Does the person enjoy it? Does the animal's owner (if not the person) enjoy it? Is the person training the animal? Overtly or covertly? Is the animal smart or stupid? What kind of animal is it? Is the animal a pet? Is it strange that the animal is a pet? Etc., etc., etc...
It wouldn't be too hard to grow a story around an idea like this, actually.
quote:uhh... can you be a bit more explicit in what you want to achieve by the exercises?
Not really. Just a general warming up of that part of the brain that helps us all be good writers, I guess.
Eric--your assignments intrigue me, and I intend to write a page-long short story of each (if not longer). If you have any others, don't be afraid to share.
posted
Okay- here's an exercise and a challenge. There's a magazine called "The First Line" (http://www.thefirstline.com) which celebrates the first line of stories. Every short story in each issue begins with the same first line.
For the winter issue the line is: I opened my e-mail with a mix of apprehension and excitement.
The due date is November 1. Let's see how many of us can get in.
posted
As John Gardner notes, the goal of doing writing exercises is that it frees the writer to focus on a certain skill -- say, description -- without having to worry about everything that needs to go into a piece of fiction. It's a lot like a guitarist practicing scales: he'll never play pure scales in any piece of music, but everything he learns and works on while practicing scales will affect every aspect of his performance.
Thus, you need to choose your exercises wisely. The few that Eric note are good, and if you're really interested, go out and get John Gardner's The Art of Fiction. At the end of his book he has a list of about 30 exercises, some of them are very difficult.
But again, the point of writing exercises isn't to write stories, but to stretch your writing abilities so when you do write stories you have more tools in the toolbox from which to choose.
posted
A member of my local writer's group recently went on a course. She came back and suggested this excercise:
Pick a random word (the word we used in our group was 'Over', but there are many more that work just as well as that did) and write whatever it suggests to you for 5 minutes. Aim to write at least 50 words.
Everyone in our group (very mixed abilities) was able to come up with something on that, and a lot of them were quite good.
posted
I think I'll enter that contest, myself. I'm working on a novel, now, but every once in a while, I need to switch gears and do something else. Kind of let the novel roll around my subconscious for a while. I find that this helps me to maintain a fresh perspective on the story. I tend to get bored if I go too long on one thing.
I started writing my story for the First Line thing, and I've gone past 2,000 words! Fiction is limited to 1,500. I only have a bit to go before it's done.
How am I going to cut 500+ words from my story? Any suggestions?
quote:How am I going to cut 500+ words from my story? Any suggestions?
Finish the story, then when you revise, look for where you can trim. Can one scene do double duty for what is now being covered by? Have you added something that doesn’t forward the story? Can you tighten each sentence so it is as clear and succinct as possible, without changing meaning or your tone.
I did a 300 word story for a contest. The first draft was around 500. By being really careful with how I developed the scene, and carefully chosing what words I used to tell the story, the idea was fully there in 293 words.
Actually, figuring out how to tigthen a story down is a good exercise into itself. (Bonus tie in to actual thread topic )
[This message has been edited by GZ (edited August 22, 2003).]
quote:How am I going to cut 500+ words from my story? Any suggestions?
One easy way to cut your story down by a quarter would be to eliminate every fourth word.
Sure, that might make the story less comprehensible, but that shouldn't hurt it in literary circles.
Actually, what you need to do is take the usual advice of "Show, don't tell" and reverse it. Find places you can tell the reader succinctly what happens, instead of showing it in detail. That will allow you to get the story down to the word limit.
posted
Honestly, the only general writing exercise I have ever found to be of any real value is to just start writing, and keep writing constantly for ten to fifteen to twenty minutes. This means putting one word next to another without stopping to think or plan or anything. Even if you start out by writing, "This is a stupid thing to do" over and over again, just keep at it. By the time you've reached the end of your planned writing time, something else - and you'll be surprised what, sometimes - will likely have found its way onto the page.
Usefulness? It has a couple, that I have found. One is to begin your writing day with this exercise; it is a great way to warm up and clear your mind of all of its clutter and of all its excuses for not writing. Another use is that sometimes as you free-write, bits and pieces for your current writing project pour themselves out onto the page.
The other note is, I have found that this is more valuable as an exercise if you do this on paper with pencil or pen, rather than doing it at the keyboard. But that's just me; you might do better with the keyboard than with pen and paper.
One more specific writing exercise I have found helpful is to write biographies of your characters. I learned this in a playwriting class, but it is equally helpful in prose fiction writing. It helps you figure out who your characters are when you are beginning a project, and it also serves as a reference as you get into your project.
Edit for clarity; I really shouldn't try to write anything when I'm this sleepy.
[This message has been edited by littlemissattitude (edited August 23, 2003).]
posted
You put [qwote] at the beginning of what you want to quote and [/qwote] at the end, except that you spell "quote" correctly. (If I'd spelled it correctly while explaining it, then the code would have disappeared and it would have shown the text inside as a quote.)
There are some other nifty things you can do. Click to reply to this topic, and then click on the link "UBB Code is ON" to read about what other codes you can use.
quote: Okay- here's an exercise and a challenge. There's a magazine called "The First Line" (http://www.thefirstline.com) which celebrates the first line of stories. Every short story in each issue begins with the same first line.
MaryRobinette
There you go, Alias!
Also, not sure if this is the type of excercise you're looking for, but I do a sort of freeform writing group... One person starts the story with their post, and the next person adds on to it, and pretty soon you have your characters marching up Doom Peak to slay the villain! Heh, its pretty fun too, so I try to participate as often as I can!
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