OC's SRWQ #1: writing exercises

[Op_Cit]

The problem of being an infrequent visitor to the AH is trying to get a feel for it before posting. And getting drawn in to silliness or off topic.

For me I mostly like to read what other's have to say on things, and I hesitate to post questions that may have been discussed in the past. (This kind of thing is often responed to negatively: newcomers asking old questions.)

Anyway as a mea culpa offering to my digressions, I'll start tossing out questions/issues I'm trying to find answers for. If I don't participate as much it's because I'm really supposed to be working on other things.

OC's SRWQ (stupid and/or redundant writing question) #1: What are some exercises that you've tried or read about/know of as a means to improve one's writing.

I've taken one creative writing class and the teacher was not good at all, one exercise she gave us was on a par with "Write a story without the use of the letter 'E'". About that time I dropped the class.

Anyway, here are some of the things that I have tried:

1) With my last story I made a specific effort not to explain, and only write what was happening or said. I had to go back at times and delete sentences that provided background. Still some got through, but I hoped the story was succinct enough.

2) I have taken a story and rewritten it almost entirely in dialog, and vise versa, sans dialog.

3) I've taken a story and rewritten the same thing swapping perspective from first to third to third not omnicient...

4) I've tried third person not omnicient or even knowing other characters. That is, focusing on one character only and describing thoughts or emotions in other characters by their actions/words only. (When I the author know what the other people are thinking, and when I thought it important to the story to convey these others' thoughts, emotions, etc.)

OK these are basic/limited... that's why I'm asking. And I'm the kind who'd rather not go look for books on the topic of writing.

 

[BlackShanglan]

One goal I often set myself in revision is paring down word count. I tend to write floridly at best, and sprawlingly in revision. I don't mind that the paring-down comes in revision; I just see it as a victory if I can chop a goodly percentage of words out of the tale and leave it tighter and more powerful.

Sometimes I do revisions with specific goals. "Today, work on developing sympathy for the narrator in the first page" (always a good idea). Or, "Today, work on making all emotional images more concrete." I tend to like to do that sort of "exercise" on drafts, because I feel like I'm making progress, but I think that they would make fine stand-alones as well.

Shanglan

 

[Op_Cit]

One goal I often set myself in revision is paring down word count. I tend to write floridly at best, and sprawlingly in revision. I don't mind that the paring-down comes in revision; I just see it as a victory if I can chop a goodly percentage of words out of the tale and leave it tighter and more powerful.

I suspect that in some arts many exercises are throw away. Do you (or anyone) have strong opinions either way on this:

Attempting a writing exercise, then evaluate ("I give it a B-") and move on,

as opposed to

Attempt a writing exercise, and then rework it as much as necessary to make it right, then go on.

 

[TheEarl]

One goal I often set myself in revision is paring down word count. I tend to write floridly at best, and sprawlingly in revision. I don't mind that the paring-down comes in revision; I just see it as a victory if I can chop a goodly percentage of words out of the tale and leave it tighter and more powerful.

Sometimes I do revisions with specific goals. "Today, work on developing sympathy for the narrator in the first page" (always a good idea). Or, "Today, work on making all emotional images more concrete." I tend to like to do that sort of "exercise" on drafts, because I feel like I'm making progress, but I think that they would make fine stand-alones as well.

Shanglan

Agreed. I'm currently going through my novel draft with the aim of 'adding more background and making the motives for the main characters' actions more obvious.' It's a good thing to rewrite with specific goals, especially in longer pieces of work.

The Earl

 

[TheEarl]

I suspect that in some arts many exercises are throw away. Do you (or anyone) have strong opinions either way on this:

Attempting a writing exercise, then evaluate ("I give it a B-") and move on,

as opposed to

Attempt a writing exercise, and then rework it as much as necessary to make it right, then go on.

Rework as much as necessary to my mind. If you know you've done something wrong and you have the skills to fix it, then fix it. Otherwise you'll do it again without realising it.

At least, that's what I think.

The Earl

 

[neonlyte]

OC

It sounds to me (from both of your posts) you are struggling with developing a 'voice'. I hope this comment is not viewed as presumptious. Most writers eventually develop a unique voice, a balance in style blending narrative, dialogue, perspective, language.

It is sometimes useful to take a passage you feel 'works' in your voice and determine why that passage seems right. Applying the same 'rules' across the entire story may help remove some of the anomolies that trouble you. BS offers good advice, paring down in revision should tighten the story, though different approaches are required for long and short works.

He/She - John/Susan, it is always a problem, the dialogue should convey who's talking, names and labels applied sparingly, in my opinion. If you need to label, check the dialogue.

 

[nushu2]

Oops, wrong thread

 

[oggbashan]

Orange

One writing exercise that I found more revealing than I expected was set by my Creative Writing tutor.

Write about this:
Buy an orange.
Picture it.
Peel it.
Eat it.

Those who actually went out and bought an orange were easily distinguished from those who 'imagined' the whole.

Og

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I generally stay away from writing exercises. There are a couple reasons for that.

For one thing, writing isn't like playing a musical instrument or learning to paint in that there aren't a fixed set of techniques that you can apply the same way story after story. You could do a ton of exercises on writing grabby opening lines, but in your next story you'll be back at square one with a new grabby opening sentence to write. So the things you might learn in an exercise aren't widely applicable.

Secondly, stories are very complicated things, and it's not often that a story can be hugely improved by tinkering with the kind of things you tinker with in exercises. Og's orange exercise can be useful in teaching you to use your senses and increasing your powers of description, but how many bad stories are bad because of the author's poor powers of description? Maybe some, but usually the things that make a story good or bad aren't that simple and easy to fix, and who knows? Maybe Og's going to develop a style in which descriptions are minimal, in which case the exercise is useless.

So that's the second thing: the main thing you learn from exercises is how to write good exercises.

The third thing is that the time you spend doing exercises could be more profitably spent (in my opinion) in writing a story, and getting your experience in the real world of fiction rather than the artifical and conrived environment of an exercise. Say, for instance, you want to work on dialog. Instead of setting yourself all these dialog exercises, why not plunge right in and write a story entirely in dialog? You get all the advantages of an exercise, plus the even more valuable experience of having to make a story out of it, and you'll have something to show for your efforts.

That's the third thing. Exercises take writing problems out of context and so are artificial at best, and possibly time-wasting.

That being said, there are some things I've done that have been kind of interesting. One of the things I used to do was try and imitate an author's style. This is a great way to learn what a style is and what makes one distinguishable from another. I got pretty good at it. I have no idea of whether it helped my writing one jot, however.

Anyhow, these are just my opinions. There are so many writing exercises around, they must be beneficial to someone.

Or are they like diets? There are so many precisely because none of them work.

--dr.M.

 

[sweetnpetite]

here are my suggestions.

1. Write without using adjectives or adverbs (this will force you to find better nouns and verbs hopefully. Conversly, write whatever and then remove all adjectives and adverbs to see if it sounds better as well as search for stronger nouns and verbs if necessary.

2. In your head or on paper, make an outline or synopsis of what could be a novel about your character (spend a limited amount of time on this- not forever) and then pick *one* incident that best seems to reflect what you want to say about the character. It could be one scene or many- the point is, you know everything there is to tell, but you don't tell everything you know. Maybe you want to choose a turning point in her life or maybe you want to show something about her character. Whatever it is, you choose 1 part of his/her life and write a short story- including only the pertantant details. My thought is that this will give your character more depth and your story more fullness. However, as I said, don't spend your entire life on just one short story

3. Write (a scene w/) all the dialog with the tagline, "He said" or "She said" (or use names. Rather than trying to use taglines to describe how things are said, try to make it evident in the story itself how it was said.

4. Write a scene were you don't identify any of the talkers, but it is evident by the dialog itself who is talking. (You probably will have to identify the first time each person talks.)To think about: How do they talk and why do they talk that way? Don't just make random things like having a guy always say y'know? at the end of everything. Have a reason why he sais that, and let it express all through his speach (is he a know it all, is he a wise ass, or is he insecure and in need of validation?)

5. Read a low rated story, see what you disliked about it, or felt was wrong. Bases on that, make a short set of rules to follow and write a scene using those rules. (For example: 1) I will not have the character yell out "I'm cummmmmmmming!" 2) I will not repeat 17 times the prase 'in and out, in and out' to describe a sex scene. Silly examples but you get the idea.)

6. Read a high rated story, or one you like about it. Write a scene were you use the skill used that you admire. (ie. pacing, vivid imagry, short into, long intro, ect)

I think most good 'writing excersizes' are just taking a skill you want to improve on and focusing on that one skill throughout. In general you get better through writing, so you might as well spend the time writing something of value, rather than something that will most definatly end up in the trash. That's my take.

One last one:

7. Find some info on a paticular poetry form and try writing a few of those. At worst it will help you learn ecomomy of words (and hopefully good word choice) At best, you find your pretty good at it.

Hope this helps some.

 

[M Crim]

One writing teacher I had, had the class do a slightly different exercise. Instead of using the excercise to jump start our writing he had an exercise to improve our writing.

We had to write an essay, the subject was open but we couldn't use the to be verb. Meaning, we couldn't use: was, is, has etc...

It was pretty tough but I think it made me think about my wording. Five years later I still have the exercise in my head.