Writing Exercises

As an aspiring author, I have faced writer's block far too many times. It's the most frustrating, dreadful thing. It feels hopeless and there can be many hair-pulling days of just trying to find the perfect words. Here's a secret though; it doesn't have to be perfect.

There are always drafts and revisions ahead, so don't fret and just keep moving forward. There are a number of exercises that can help move you along. It's much better to write absolute crap than to not write at all.

A good start may be to find a sentence. A creative writing book I once used in class showed me this exercise. Here are a few cliché sentences to get you going:

"It was a dark and stormy night..."

"It was love at first sight."

"His eyes were glued to the screen."

Or ask a friend to give you a sentence to work on. Here's an example of the sentence from my textbook and the paragraph I wrote for it.

"It was a Sunday - not a day, but rather a gap between two other days."

'And she was a spunky red head - not as crazy as the stereotypes, but still with extra crazy. We met up at the ice cream parlor by the dock. She ordered the Neapolitan, I never cared for it. It's an indecisive ice cream that couldn't decide what flavor it wanted to be. I got vanilla myself, can't beat the classics. I never thought she could be capable of such dastardly things until she pulled out that hand gun and wrapped her pretty painted fingers around the trigger - her crazy meter went up. At first I thought it was a joke, I thought it might have been a water gun or trick gun. It wasn't. No one in the parlor seemed alarmed, like this was just a normal day. I then realized there was no one else in the parlor. There were no customers, just the shop owner in the back. If i was smart I would have noticed the closed sign when we walked in. Sh was so beautifully distracting that I hadn't seen it coming. Well, I see it now.'

Another way to continue the story is to just do something drastic. Kill someone or reveal a dark secret. Have a dragon attack the village! Anything to keep it going. I used death to continue this short story:

"Best wishes from your ex-wife," she cooed. It was just like my ex to have me killed. It was a shame. I was finally starting to feel cozy with my life, guess it doesn't matter much now.

''Bang,' and that's all I could remember.'

I could go on from there. The journey could move on to the main character's after life or the story could jump to a new main character, perhaps the woman assassin or the wife. The story originally ended to keep the audience wondering, but was expanded with the help of an event.

One of the hardest parts about a story can be writing the point of view. Getting the character's voice just right can involve a lot of patience and thought. The motives of the character as well as their opinions and beliefs need to be expressed properly. When that gets too tough, think about writing from a different perspective. It can help get a hold of the situation and give inspiration for how the main character might interact when approached by this new view point. It doesn't have to be very complex or very long, just enough to get a basic sense down. The process also just allows a moment to step-back and gain a fresh perspective on the character.

For my example we go to the a third-person omniscient point of view following a carrot, a view one wouldn't see all that commonly.

'A woman set the grocery bags on the table, there were overloaded and heavy and that wasn't even the half of them. She turned to go back out to the car to collect the remaining bags, not taking notice of the lone carrot falling from it's place. It slipped from the bag, dropped off the counter and rolled onto the floor. It sat there contemplating how it had wandered into it's situation.

'The woman returned with more sacks of grocery bags. The carrot went unnoticed. She bustled about, trying to put everything away in record time. In her haste she kicked the carrot. She felt nothing and knew nothing of what she had done. The carrot felt abused and rolled beneath the fridge by the force of the kick.

'The woman was done in no time and left the carrot to the quiet of the kitchen. However, it did not remain quiet for long. Before the carrot could being examining his situation a hoard of children came galloping through the door. All girls, 'This family seems to have a dominate female presence,' the carrot thought to itself. The carrot shivered with the 'thud, thud' of the opening and closing of the fridge door. It seemed like years of passing as the carrot continued unnoticed. Day after ay he watched the family routine.

'Dad goes to work, kids got to school and mom does whatever mom does. Kids come home, dad comes home. Then for two days after every five days it's family fun day - often without dad. It was a curious ritual to the carrot, but it could not ask any more about it. It would go on examining the unaware family.'

The most important part is just to keep writing. If you get stuck on specifics write the general direction of what needs to happen in brackets '[]' and just keep going. If you're stuck on a word, do what the pros do and fill it in with 'ELEPHANT' in order to come back to it later. Write and re-write and toss the entire thing out and write it again. Success comes from practicing and trying again and again. Follow this last piece of advice and you'll never fail because you'll always be striving.