writing exercises

Weekly Workout: Three Ring Circus Part One – WANT

January 28, 2014 by openchannel 5 Comments

The other day I was having trouble focusing my thoughts enough to prioritize my day. There was the yoga routine I had been neglecting, the Book Three Lexicon to get to my copy editor, the paperwork to be filled out and mailed so I could stay in Canada, the book launch plans to, well, plan… I equated my mind to a Three-Ring Circus. Too many things calling for my attention all at once.

This made me think about how complex we are, how things we want (I want to be in good physical shape, I want to have a successful book launch party) and things we must do (I must fill out this paperwork or I’ll get booted out of Canada) and things we need (I need to create balance in my life) pull our heads and hearts in various directions, how we can get blocked when there are strong emotions around any of these things.

Today at Three Ring Circus Central I thought we’d deal with the idea of WANT.

What your character WANTS in the outside world is generally in conflict with what she needs. (And with what other people want.) When I speak of “need” in character development, I’m speaking of something the character may not even realize she needs, or something she denies she needs. It’s at the crux of her character arc. It’s the obstacle she needs to find and/or change in her internal world. In the end, it’s what we want for her. (i.e. she thinks she WANTS to become VP of the company, but what she really needs is be more vulnerable with her loved ones)

Sometimes characters get what they need instead of what they thought they wanted, sometimes they get both (they win the race AND they become a better person). Unless it’s a tragedy. It’s sad and frustrating as a reader if our character doesn’t get what she needs.

I am currently reading The Floating Islands by Rachel Neumeier. One of the two protagonists is a young girl in a land where young girls of certain status have no independence. They are not allowed to go to town without a male escort, let alone have a job of any kind. What the character says she really WANTS is to be a chef. But she knows this is impossible because she’s a girl. In facing the obstacles around this, we’ll find out what she really needs.

I have yet to figure that out. There is another force at work in the story that has not completely revealed itself. But it’s snaking its way in enough to keep me intrigued. She is currently resisting this mysterious force, and I know her wants and needs will eventually collide.

YOUR WORKOUT

1) SET YOUR TIMER for 7-10 minutes.

Start with the line: At the beginning of my story, my character dreams / schemes of…

Write without stopping, crossing out, rereading, or editing.

2) SET YOUR TIMER for 10-12 minutes.

Start with the line: Directly in the way of what my character wants is…

3) SET YOUR TIMER for 12-15 minutes.

There should be a moment where your character does not believe she will get what she wants (whether she gets it in the end or not).

For this section, start with the line: The moment she realizes she might not get what she wants happens when…

Write without stopping, crossing out, rereading, or editing.

And have a great week!

* * *

If you are a blogger who would like to post your own weekly workout exercise with me every Monday, please write to info (at) danikadinsmore.com

Weekly Writing Workout: Unconfrontable, That’s What You Are

January 20, 2014 by openchannel 2 Comments

I love to make lists. I’m kind of a compulsive list maker. One kind I make is a list of “unconfrontables.” How do things get on this list? Easy, by not doing them. If I don’t do them long enough, they are labeled “unconfrontable.”

If there is anything I have been avoiding, putting off, sitting around waiting to be fixed, mended, or in some other way taken care of, it goes on the list. Some items are easy, like sewing all the buttons on my pile of things that have lost buttons. Some are daunting tasks, like doing my taxes (an annual unconfrontable for me). Every once in a while I re-evaluate my list to see if I still care about each item. If I confirm that yes, this is something I want done (or needs to be done) and I am not any closer to doing it, it stays on my list. Sometimes I purge things from the list because a) they are no longer relevant, b) I don’t care any more, c) I’m obviously committed to not doing it.

(Eventually I do address the things on the list. Sometimes I have to prioritize them. Other times I do one a day until they are done. At the end of one year a few years ago, I went on an “unconfrontable” binge.)

Once in a while, something gets on the list that isn’t as tangible as buttons or tax paperwork. It’s a conversation that I’ve been avoiding that has possibly fermented into feelings of resentment. Could be talking to someone about quitting a gig or having a long-overdue talk with a loved one. Whatever it is, the way I play it out in my head is never how it actually happens. Darn people for not reading from my script.

Much of the time, though, doing the “unconfrontable” item takes much less time or is less dramatic than my head has made it out to be. And getting through a conversation that has been put off for days, weeks, even months is always a great relief. (But not always good for story conflict.)

What does your character’s “unconfrontable” list look like?
What conversation has your character been avoiding?
What is s/he afraid of?

YOUR WORKOUT

1) SET YOUR TIMER for 7-10 minutes.

Start with the line: My Character has been avoiding __________ because …

Write without stopping, crossing out, rereading, or editing.

2) SET YOUR TIMER for 10-12 minutes.

Start with the line: My character’s resentment (or anger) looks like …

Write without stopping, crossing out, rereading, or editing.

3) SET YOUR TIMER for 15-20 minutes.

Write a SCENE in which your character finally CONFRONTS this unconfrontable situation/person. Please don’t make it easy for him/her! Make your character sweat, worry, fret, try to manipulate the situation in their favour, fail miserable, try another tactic, etc.

As usual, don’t have him/her say exactly what he/she means (i.e. don’t be “on the nose” about it). HAVE YOUR CHARACTER ACT FROM THAT SPACE. Question, misdirect, accuse, or something else..

Start with the line: As Character X approaches Character Y …

Write without stopping, crossing out, rereading, or editing.

And have a great week!

* * *

If you are a blogger who would like to post your own weekly workout exercise with me every Monday, please write to info (at) danikadinsmore.com

Weekend Workout: How To Be

November 2, 2013 by openchannel 4 Comments

Just because it’s NaNo month and I’m on Team Pantser this year, doesn’t mean I’ll stop doing my long-hand exercises. I’m sure a lot of people (especially Pantsers) type everything straight into their computer. During NaNo month, far more of my first draft definitely happens through my keyboard. But, I almost always warm up with a hand-written exercise and when I get stuck, I always reach for a pen. Writing by hand, for me, opens me up creatively, frees my ideas, my blocks, and my editor.

Whether you are participating in the NaNoWriMo this month or not (and cheers to you if you are), I’ve cooked up a little exercise that you might find helpful at some point when developing a character.

A few weeks ago, the students in one of my classes read How to Steal a Dog by Barbara O’Connor. A sweet middle grade story about a girl who must live in a car with her mother and brother after their father leaves them with no money and they are evicted from their apartment. Her mother is working two low-wage jobs in order to come up with rent and deposit for a new place. The girl decides she’s going to help her mother raise money by stealing a dog. She’ll wait for the owner to post a reward and then bring the dog back for the reward.

I didn’t find anything particularly surprising or eye-opening about the story, but I did like the concept, the characters, and the voice. I think voice is one of those things that’s difficult to teach, and even to explain to writers, but you kinda know it when you see it.

In the book, the main character creates a list of instructions in her journal on how to steal a dog. The assignment I gave to my students after they read the book was to write their own instruction list for something in the form of a poem, vignette, or short story (for example, one wrote instructions for “How to Make Someone Uncomfortable When You Pass them on the Sidewalk ).

It was a great exercise, so I decided to use it another way. What if the character in your story wasn’t giving someone instructions on how to DO something, but how to BE something. What about how to be them? This might be a great way not only to develop voice, but backstory, motivation, wound, etc. In other words: character.

YOUR WORKOUT

Set your timer for 15-20 minutes. Put your character in a place (so we know who her audience is): a psych ward, the waiting room of a dentist office, an auditorium, school lunchroom, or maybe just home in bed writing in her diary.

Your start line is: To be me, you have to…

Write without stopping and see where that takes you.

Don’t edit, cross out, or re-read while you write. Keep the pen moving!

If you like the exercise, try it again with another character.

And have a great weekend!

NaNo NaNo!

Weekend Writing Workout and Writing Workout Groups

February 2, 2013 by openchannel 4 Comments

Many people have writing groups where they read and critique each other’s work. It’s definitely a challenge, though, to find a good critique match. You want critique partners who have similar experience and who write in the same genres. And are just as committed to writing and critiquing as you are.

My critique partners are separate from my writing group. I have a handful of friends I trust with early drafts of work and they trust me with theirs. We’ve been reading and critiquing each other for years, growing together as professional writers.

My writing group does something else. We write.

The idea for our writing group stemmed from a long-standing writing group in Seattle called the Louisa’s Writers. (named for both Louisa street and Louisa’s Cafe where the writing happens) Writers show up and write for 45 minutes to an hour, twice a week. I mean write by hand straight, no stopping, no reviewing the work, no crossing out, no editing of any kind. It’s from the gut.

Then the work is shared. No critique involved, although people will point something out later if it struck them as interesting.

When I showed up there last week, there were about 25 people writing. When we started, it went quiet but for the few other patrons. The energy emanating from the collective minds, hearts, guts, and fingers was palpable and the time actually flew by.

Our much smaller writing group (called Louisa’s North, even though it takes place at The Grind) meets every Sunday. We write for 20 minutes, share, write for 20 more, and share again. Same thing – recommended writing by hand, no stopping, reviewing, or editing of any kind.

Why this works: this is far different than writing by yourself into your computer for 20 or 40 minutes. Usually when you write like that you stop and think about your word choice, your plot, your intention, and editing is too convenient. This is riding the momentum of something else. Strange inspirations come when you write with such forward momentum. Directions are explored without attachment. This kind of writing opens you up.

And it doesn’t matter your level of skill or what experiment you’re working on that day. It’s a personal experience. An added bonus to me is the letting go of ego. You read your work raw with no preambles or apologies.

Jack Remick and Bob Ray began the Louisa’s group over 15 years ago. I used to attend back in the late 90’s. Between them they have dozens of books, but they still attend the writing group when they can. And why not?

WHAT THE HECK DO WE WRITE?

We work on whatever calls us to it. Could be a W.I.P. or something new. Jack and Bob used to make up start lines but discovered that whatever needs to be written will come though if everyone simply starts with the line:

Today I am writing about…

And off we go. The mess of the mind, heart, and gut shot through the pen. The rest of the world disappears. It could turn up lost memories, new insights, plot twists, four pages of dialogue, or a monologue from a goddess.

Sometimes I use the startlines I’ve come up with here on my Weekend Writing Workout if they pertain to what I’m working on. Wherever I start, though, something moves.

~ ~ ~

LOOKING FOR OTHER WEEKEND WORKOUT BLOGGERS

Sometimes I can’t get to my weekend workout post due to other writing/life stuff. I’m looking for 4 or 5 other bloggers who’d like to post a Weekend Workout with me on Friday mornings (sending me their links by midnight the night before). That way, writers can jump around from workout to workout, get a whole week full of them, and we can post each other’s links if we don’t have time for an original post. Workouts may vary: poetry, fiction, memoir, etc. As long as it’s a writing exercise AND something you would try yourself.

Contact me at info (at) danikadinsmore (dot) com if you are interested. Please pass the idea on to anyone else you think might be a good candidate.

CLICK HERE for more information about my Weekend Workouts.

Weekend Workout: Sympathy for Bad Boys (and Girls)

January 25, 2013 by openchannel 3 Comments

Last week I posted a workout about creating compassion for characters. More specifically, getting your readers to sympathize with a protagonist who isn’t a particularly nice person. Who probably changes by the end of the story, who probably redeems him or herself eventually, but who starts out as someone you might not want to bring home for dinner.

This is something I am personally dealing with in my W.I.P. for my protagonist IdoLL. I brought this up in my writing group and we talked about the need to create a “save the cat” moment for her.

Save the Cat is a book, and a concept, by screenwriter Blake Snyder (1956-2009). If you want to show who your hero is, have him save a cat early on in the story. Even if the character is a not-so-nice person, we will immediately have sympathy for him if he saves a cat (conversely, if you want your audience to hate a character, my own screenwriting mentors used to say show him “kick a dog” – don’t ask me why the cat gets saved and the dog gets kicked)

This doesn’t mean literally (could be, but careful of not being cliche). It’s simply a moment that shows the person has a heart. It’s a moment of vulnerability.

In my story, IdoLL would never do something that made her feel vulnerable in front of others. Even hugs from friends can’t last too long. So, her “save the cat” moment is while she’s alone and it’s not so much a cat, but a loving moment with a broken toy her father gave her as a child. She even hides it from others. In this secret time, her true character is revealed.

YOUR WORKOUT

This workout is slightly different because you will write the SCENE at the end of it. Your “save the cat” scene or private vulnerable moment.

1) Set your timer for 5-7 minutes.

Start at the top of the page with the following startline:

My character feels broken when she finds / discovers that . . .

Write, don’t stop, don’t edit, don’t cross out.

2) When the timer stops, Set your timer for 7-10 more minutes.

Start with the following line:

When my character is alone she faces . . .

Write, don’t stop, don’t edit, don’t cross out.

3) NOW, set your timer for 10-15 more minutes.

WRITE the scene in which we feel the pain of your protagonist’s private moment (just write what’s happening, don’t get caught up in the minutia of description).

Use the start line: When he/she walked into the room . . .

Even though you are writing a scene, just Write, don’t stop, don’t edit, don’t cross out.

Read your exercises and your scene, make notes, highlight what makes sense.

Happy Weekend!

Weekend Workout: Love Uber Alles

January 19, 2013 by openchannel 3 Comments

Yesterday, while I was procrastinating working on my own blog post, I came across this lovely post by children’s author Kelly Barnhill. It’s basically about how everyone, at some point in their lives, but particularly when we are mean-spirited children, participates in “bad behaviour.” It was also about the child taking responsibility for that behaviour and the parent loving the child in spite the behaviour. What I took away from it was the joy of loving the mess that we are, the whole package. We are tragically flawed beings, and I have always found a certain beauty in that.

We are all mended cracks and creaky gears. We are broken smiles, broken hearts, broken minds and broken lives. We are hack-jobs and cast-offs and wobbly legs and gouged surfaces. We are soft edges, scuffed corners, ungleaming and unvarnished, but pleasant to hold and comforting to touch. (from Barnhill‘s post)

My own mother said that her philosophy as a parent was that the child was never bad, the behaviour was. We are perfect beings who make mistakes – – if you can wrap your head around that oxymoron.

All of this thought-tracked into something I once heard Alexandra Cunningham (one of the lead writers on Desperate Housewives) say on a panel: Write every character with compassion, no matter how different from yourself.

Let’s expand that to say, “Write every character with compassion, no matter how bad their behaviour.”

You can take this to mean write your villains with compassion, but it may be your protagonist who needs more love from you. This is the case for me right now with my aforementioned W.I.P.

IdoLL engages in a lot of bad behaviour. She needs to; that’s the whole point. She is mean-spirited and selfish. Feedback from my focus group has been that it is difficult to empathize with her because of this bad behaviour. However, the majority of this group also told me that they really like her transformation. She redeems herself at the end and they were happy about this. “It’s satisfying” one young reader said.

So, if the reader makes it more than ½ way through the book, they will start to see her transformation, but if the reader puts the book down for lack of connection, they’ll never get there.

My job now is to create more compassion for her at the beginning of the story, so that even though she engages in this bad behaviour, we love her anyway.

I thought perhaps I should do this by writing her with more compassion. The thing is, I DO have a lot of compassion for IdoLL, but I was relying on her sense of humour to carry her through. Cleverness and a sense of humour in your protagonists can often persuade readers into liking them. But this time, it wasn’t enough.

Your Workout

Set your timer for 5-7 minutes.

Start at the top of the page with the following startline:

1) The wound that festers in my character’s heart is made up of …

Write, don’t stop, don’t edit, don’t cross out.

When the timer stops, Set your timer for 7-10 more minutes.

Start with the following line:

2) My character feels utterly betrayed when . . .

Write, don’t stop, don’t edit, don’t cross out.

When the timer stops, Set your timer for 10-12 more minutes.

Start with the following line:

3) The pain of this betrayal looks like…

Write, don’t stop, don’t edit, don’t cross out.

Read your exercises, make notes, highlight what makes sense.

Happy Weekend!

End-of-Year Plerk-out!

December 26, 2012 by openchannel Leave a Comment

It’s funny how little down time I allow myself by before I feel the need to get something done. My husband’s the same way. We like to be productive.

During the “holidays” one would most likely find us in our respective offices brain-deep in some type of creative or career project: digitizing rare audio cassettes, typing up old journal pages, writing a proposal for a conference, a class, a book.

Between the productivity we take a walk to a local coffee shop and the subject of how we rarely relax comes up. “It’s because we like our work,” I say to him. “But our work is our play. We don’t work; we plerk.”

(SIDENOTE: we discussed the spelling of the combination of “work” and “play” and decided against “plork” because no one would pronounce it right.)

Plerking for me is writing this now. It’s editing a manuscript. It’s jotting a poem down, capturing a melody, brainstorming TV movie ideas. Plerking is when one enjoys the work of one’s life so much that it doesn’t feel like work – which is not to be confused with the ease of the endeavour.

Play can be just as challenging as work. Have you ever played sports? Sports are challenging physically and mentally, but we never ask, “what sport do you work?” Not even to professionals.

A few weeks ago I gave myself (and invited others) the challenge of writing a short story by the end of the year using a paragraph from the 50 First Lines exercise. I posted my top 5 and ended up choosing the following paragraph:

Green, red, blue . . . what mattered the colour of his blood when his heart was a broken hinge? He lay his head back down on the institutional hospital pillow. The nurses didn’t know what to do with him. He had red blood spurting from a gash in his arm and green blood coming from his nose. He reached up and touched it. His nose. Where Karmen had punched him.

EDITING YOUR PLERK

I was on a panel about editing at VCon with four other authors. All of us had different techniques and rituals around editing. The only thing we all completely agreed upon was the importance of it.

When someone asked if it was possible to spend too much time editing, I said, “Perfectionism is the opposite of done, but I have never heard anyone say, ‘Wow, that was a great story, too bad it suffered from over-editing.’ It’s a bit of a balance.”

Here are some basic steps I take when I edit a short story:

-After I pound out the first draft, I usually read it over a few times and do some straight intuitive editing.

-I tend to explain too much in the first drafts of my short stories. If I explain anything I first ask myself, is this information necessary? If so, is there a way to show it in action or dialogue instead?

For instance, here’s a doozy:

Karmen had always loved attention, had loved flaunting her nerdy boy toy with his natural, baby-faced good looks. One-hundred percent human, not like those trendy “mutants” with their artificial modifications. She liked showing him off like a pet, daring any man, woman, or hermaph to challenge her claim.

Instead of explaining all of this, I could have a scene where she takes her boy toy to a party and threatens someone or makes a snide remark about a “mutant.”

-I examine each character individually. What is her motivation? What is his character arc? Who is this person? I visualize each character in my mind doing something. I think it’s important to visualize them in action, not just what they look like physically.

-Once I’ve edited it a few times, I give it to one or two people in my crit arena. I get some feedback, take some notes, read over my notes, and then set them aside. (I don’t obsess over notes. If something clicks, it will reveal itself in the rewrite)

-I PRINT the story out and read it OUT LOUD. This is vital. I read every line for “sound” and “sense.” Meaning, does it sound good and does it make sense for the story.

-I question my “darlings.” If certain lines make me feel clever, I examine them in the context of the story. Yes, cleverness is good, but I was a bit in love with the last line of my story so that each of 3 versions of the ending still contained that final line. I wanted to make sure the last line actually worked.

-I look for the logic of the story. The overall holds-together-ness of it. If I look at it objectively, do the pieces of the story fall together so that the outcome is believed to be a necessary conclusion?

Sometimes when I’m editing I freeze up and procrastinate, fearing that I will somehow “ruin” the story by editing. That I’ll make it worse. I can’t say that has ever happened. I have to remind myself of that. I always save each new version just in case, but I rarely find that I need to refer back to it.

Your End-Of-Year Plerkout:

If you’ve started a short story, use that. If not, find something you’d like to “plerk” on that needs finishing (assess that it is finishable in 6 days). A poem, a song, a collage, even a novel – but only if you’re that close to the end.

The idea is to FINISH something, as in, ready for submission. An actual edit and polish so that you can start the New Year with a brand new story to toss to the story-catchers.

Have a Great New Year and Be Safe.

Weekend Workout: End-of-Year Short Story Challenge! (or 50 First Lines Redux!)

December 14, 2012 by openchannel 4 Comments

I’ve been jumping up and down in my mind (I do that) to use some material from the 50 first lines exercise I started months ago. I used this exercise, another of my favourites, for a writing contest back in February and the results were terrific.

The whole 50 First Lines exercise is a blast and it works. I’ve proven to myself over and over again that it works, and now I have an excuse to use some of my results.

There’s an open call for a short story anthology I’m interested in submitting to and the deadline is Dec 31^st, so it’s perfect timing. If you’d like to join me and submit to this anthology (or to any other anthology or magazine or just want to finish a short story by the end of the year), you can play along. You can play along regardless of anything, but having a goal and a deadline is a great motivator.

If you did not participate in February and want to catch up, or start over again, here’s the whole exercise:

STEP ONE: Write 50 first lines. Seriously. This is not as difficult as it sounds. I recommend doing it in one 30 minute sitting. Just crank them out off the cuff. Don’t think too hard or you’ll crush the gems.

For inspiration, here are the winners from the first round of the contest last Feb.

STEP TWO: Pick your Top 10. Here were mine:

It was the colour of vomit… probably because it was vomit.

The clown nose was the last straw.

The idea was half-baked – – but then again, she liked things a little raw.

The horse was her neighbour’s and they were both studs.

Green, blue, red . . . what mattered the colour of his blood when his heart was a broken hinge?

It was a perfect morning for picking mushrooms.

I was taking a short cut through the cemetery when I spotted it. Him. It.

If he had told her about his origami-folding autistic idiot-savant brother in the first place, they wouldn’t be in this jam.

“I think it can be reattached,” he said.

It wasn’t the first time she had been arrested for bar-fighting, and the other time wasn’t her fault either.

STEP THREE: Write 10 first paragraphs.

After you’ve chosen your Top 10 first lines, write the first paragraph for each. Again, just crank them out as quickly as possible in one sitting. Don’t edit, don’t over think, just write.

Here are the winning paragraphs from the contest.

STEP FOUR: pick 3-5 of your own that you like

Here were my 5 favourite paragraphs:

~ ~ ~

It was a perfect morning for picking mushrooms. Green and misty in that way that spring teases. If she could identify them, she’s pick them now. They had sprouted up overnight, literally overnight, on the median across from the bus stop. But she couldn’t tell the difference between the poisonous and nonpoisonous ones. Nor did she know how much of the poisonous ones to add into a tincture, so that it would be just this side of magic, and not lethal.

~ ~ ~

I was taking a short cut through the cemetery when I spotted it. Him. It. The limping coyote. I had always assumed it was a he. I hadn’t seen him in weeks and I was glad he was safe, although not glad it was almost dark and that I was alone. I shifted my grocery bag to my left arm. Was I supposed to make myself big or small in the face of a coyote? Run towards him, back away, play dead?

~ ~ ~

If he had told her about his origami-folding autistic idiot-savant brother in the first place, they wouldn’t be in this jam. Instead he had told her to “wait” outside the non-descript building while he went inside. When he reemerged, sheepishly introducing Simon to her, almost apologetic, she was pale as a ghost. Unresponsive, even when he waved his hand in front of her face. He had no idea what had happened in the 20 minutes she had been sitting there on the bench. He was spooked, but Simon seemed to be all right. His brother placed his paper crane in Marion’s lap and she snapped out of her trance.

~ ~ ~

“I think it can be reattached,” he said. He examined the finger more closely. The wires had fried, but the finger itself seemed functional. “Here,” he said, handing the finger to ROY, “hold onto that until we can get back to the garage. I’m going to collect some more conch shells from the beach.”

~ ~ ~

STEP FIVE: Pick the paragraph that “clicks” for you, ignites the proverbial light bulb, and write a draft of that story by NEXT FRIDAY (Dec 21). That’s one week for a short story (2,000-5,000 words). You can do it. That still leaves 10 days to edit it for submission.

If you’re having trouble choosing from among your brilliant 5 paragraphs, try working on each one a little and see what happens. Since the anthology I’m submitting to is themed (it’s about heroes coming home) it helped in my selection. I looked for the “hero coming home” in each one. I started three different possible stories until one took off.

You’ll know when it does.

NEXT WEEKEND WORKOUT: We’ll edit and polish them by the end of the month.

Have a great weekend!

P.S. Someone just told me writer couple Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch suggested starting a short story each Monday, finishing it during the week, and submitting it that Friday. Now that sounds like a great challenge, and with 50 first lines, you’ve already got a year of stories waiting for you. (Hmmm, I smell a 2013 writing challenge for me)

Weekend Workout: The Fabulous What If?

December 7, 2012 by openchannel 2 Comments

I know, I know . . . I’ve mentioned my timed “what if” exercise before, but I’m too lazy to go back and see what I said about it. I bring this one back to you this weekend simply because I used it this morning while writing and found it useful.

There is something simple and wonderful about a good “what if” exercise. I always seem to find what I need from it. I use it with kids and adults and probably more so than any other “what do I do now” exercise when I’m stuck writing or editing.

There are a few ways I use my “what if.” Sometimes I already have an idea and just set the timer (10 to 15 minutes), and start with the line “What if … ,” writing spontaneously to work out the idea. Other times I make a list and write as many “what if” scenarios as possible, or I keep listing them until one suddenly pops out as “the answer.”

For example, I used this latter technique a few days ago when working with one of my young writers. She had to create a short story starting with the line “I looked out the classroom window and the playground was empty.”

“Cool,” I said, “let’s make a ‘what if’ list!”

She started writing her list:

-What if it was summertime?
-What if there had been a flu epidemic?
-What if it was the janitor looking out the window?
-What if school had been closed down for some reason?
-What if the school was about to be demolished?

We both looked at each other when she wrote that last one.

“I like it,” I said. “So do I,” said she.

“Okay, what else? Why is the narrator standing there? Start another ‘what if’ list.”

-What if the narrator was going to sabotage the demolition?
-What if he was a teacher who wanted to see it one last time?
-What if he used to go to that elementary school?
-What if he was the one demolishing the school and it was his old school?

Yeah! We knew she had it with that last one. What a great little vignette she could now write about a man who comes to revisit his past just before demolishing it.

She could have done a third “what if” with that last one. What if someone comes in and catches him crying? What if he refuses to cry? What if he remembers a painful moment in elementary school? What if that were the moment he shut himself off to love? And so on.

This is such a helpful brainstorming technique you can turn to, with no pressure, when you’re stuck (or not!). You can start brainstorming a story idea with a “what if” as in the example above, or you can use it to explore one particular idea in the middle of your story.

Today I needed Brigitta to have an encounter with something new and awesome and frightening. It dawned on my right away that she would meet the Eternal Dragon. But what would it do when it met her?

“What if she meets the Eternal Dragon and It . . .”

REMEMBER if you do the list to actually WRITE IT BY HAND and write the words “what if” each time to keep your thoughts moving. GREAT exercise for teachers for creative writing assignments.

If a 12-year-old can do this exercise successfully, so can you.

Have a great weekend.

Weekend Workout: Too Much Information (in a good way)

November 24, 2012 by openchannel Leave a Comment

This is a tardy Weekend Workout, but all my ‘Merican friends were probably digesting for the past two days and couldn’t write anyway.

I was planning to do a rerun this weekend, but ran across a note to myself about using TMI (too much information) to create conflict (big, small, serious, humorous). I was specifically thinking about it because of a real life example. Okay, my 74-year-old mom has discovered boys again. I think this is great, since my dad died 6 years ago. But there’s only so much I want to hear about my mom’s escapades. Can you imagine writing that scene into a comedy script?

That’s a minor conflict, but there are other ways TMI can create serious internal and external conflicts, like if your character learns something she doesn’t want to know or shouldn’t know. TMI can put your character’s marriage, job, or life at risk. Maybe she knows her sister is having an affair, maybe she knows her boss is bribing the mafia, maybe she knows (as in one of the Cloud Atlas stories) that a report about an unsafe energy source is being hidden from public eye.

You get the point.

I put this brand spanking new exercise together based on this idea. If you try it, let me know how you think it worked.

your workout

Set your timer for 5 minutes.
Start at the top of the page with the following startline:

1) My protagonist is in EXTERNAL conflict when she learns . . .

Write, don’t stop, don’t edit, don’t cross out.

When the timer stops, Set your timer for 7 more minutes.
Start with the following line:

1) My protagonist is in INTERNAL conflict when she learns . . .

Write, don’t stop, don’t edit, don’t cross out.

When the timer stops, Set your timer for 10 more minutes.
Start with the following line:

3) Too Much Information for my protagonist means that she must . . .

Write, don’t stop, don’t edit, don’t cross out.

Read your exercises, make notes, highlight what makes sense.

Happy (Thanksgiving) Weekend!