Category: Writing Exercise

Writing Exercise: Creating Community and Connection

Erin Penn 1 Comment


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A favorite new topic at conventions is how writers can create a community, build third spaces, and connect with others to help keep them growing as writers. Whether this is fallout from the isolation of COVID, the continuing reduction of the size of family and places for people to create friends, or just a natural cycle of knowledge, community and connection is on everybody’s minds.

WRITING EXERCISE: Interact with a writing community.

First off, define what you (1) NEED and what you (2) WANT from a group of people involved in writing. This could be I need to learn more about writing, I need some one to encourage me in writing (daily, on weekends), I need a critique partner. I want accountability. I want someone to talk to over coffee about writing. Remember to define the difference between what is NEEDED to feed your writing and what is WANTED to feed your happiness.

Second, if you are not now part of a writing community, define the steps to find one or create one. And how you want to interact with it. Should it be in person, or social media, or zoom?

Third, if you are part of a writing community, interact with at least one of the formats this week/today. Respond to someone’s memes. Attend a convention. Check in with Con Tinual (on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/con.tinual.37 or YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/continualconvention ). Go to your favorite writers on TikTok and watch a video there. Call a writing buddy out of the blue.

Fourth, if you haven’t already, set up a weekly, monthly, or daily writing contact. Record it in Outlook or some other format to remind you.

Do as little or as much of this writing exercise as you want or can. Start the building blocks of the community you need.

My attempt:

First, I needed one more interaction with people in-person to happen regularly. I looked and looked and looked for a writing community locally. The conventions were two hours away and the people who attended them were even further. My local city had nothing. I checked at book stores and the meet-up app. While I was part of a book club, and had several other book clubs I could join, I NEEDED a writing group…In-Person. I WANTED to not be the one to organize it. I’ve created groups so many times before and didn’t want to do that yet again; partly lack of energy, but partly because I don’t know when I will be pulled away from the duty for other things and I didn’t want to have others depend on me for it. I would like to be in the position to be a learner, not a teacher, bur realize at this point of my life that is unlikely.

Second, miracle of miracles, a nearby library system started a writer’s guild. It is a ten-mile forty-minute drive, lots of lights. They are mostly older folks and not really in this professionally. But they want community and so do I. It’s been three months; no one is working to friendship outside the group, but it is much, much better than nothing.

Third, for the discord group of Falstaff (give me a shout-out in the comments if you want to join), I drop a daily meme and interact with anyone doing stuff there. Once a month, I have an open-door discord where we can hang out in Discord and talk and I also host a once a month type-in where the discord is open by we are.not.talking, but writing.

Fourth, the once-a-month Discord meetings are in the Outlook for reminders.

To one of the Discord people who asked about community creating, I wrote the following:

Silent writing time in person; twined writing over the phone, discord, or zoom; non-reading brainstorming session (MUST ALTERNATE!) – describe the issue (sometimes describing the issue helps to resolve it) – maybe not even have an issue, but describe the story can help find flaws; break time once a month just to talk and support (more for extroverts) — like the Open Door Discord we have once a month here.

WRITING EXERCISE: Outline Before or After

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Photo by Kaleidico on Unsplash

When writing there are hundreds of ways to prep for writing.

  1. Daydreaming the story – this is the least effective, nothing is being written and once the story is complete in your head, the Zeigarnick Effect kicks in and it all goes away. (Zeigarnik effect is remembering interrupted tasks, but completed activities are forgotten.) It is satisfying, in that you told yourself the story, but that is the only person who is going to know it. (See Writing Exercise: Unputdownable (6/4/2026) for details.)
  2. Pants it – just start writing it out. Like daydreaming, but with a keyboard. Problem is you can go down a wrong path.
  3. Railroad it – completely outline it and completely stick to the outline, even when the characters clearly don’t agree with the action. This is the second least effective. You at least got a story, but there is no joy and not vibe to it.
  4. Quick Sketch – Beginning, middle, and end. Inflection point. Rising action. Emotional high point defined. Define two or three characters and dive in.
  5. Chapter outline – Learn how long your natural chapters are – more by number of scenes than by word count for this method. Write one to three chapters per sentence. Tweak it. Then start writing.
  6. Detailed outline – Back to English class for you: outline the story, beats, and word count. Overlay character and plot arcs.
  7. String theory – Describe your story to a patient friend while using a white board. Show how each piece connects to the other with big lines. Have the beloved patient friend write things down, breaking out characters, A and B plots, etc. Buy them dinner, then get to writing.
  8. Quilt it – Write all the scenes you know you want for the story piece meal. Then outline it, putting the pieces together and figure out how to stitch the transitions between the scenes.
  9. Hit the Beats – Pick up one of the structure and beats sheets available everywhere and stretch the story over the composition and have a jam session writing.

The list goes on.

Today’s writing exercise is outlining.

“But I’m a pantser!” That is fine, you will outline AFTER you are done. This can help you figure out what you are missing in the story.

WRITING EXERCISE: For your present work-in-progress or your next one, create an outline for the story. This can be for any length and in any style – flash to five-book series.

READING EXERCISE: With a short story, outline the story. Drop in the comments below which short story you read (title and author and anthology or other location), and let us know what you discovered during the outline process.

My Attempt: Outline the followup to Roadtrip Teamup. The outline was really important to reacquaint myself with the material after six months away from the original creation.

Writing Exercise: What is Missing?

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I mentioned in the Editing Rant: What did you see? (7/14/2026) “readers have an easier time of visualizing what is there rather than what is removed.”

But as a writer, you often need to write about something that is no longer there. A clue that went missing, something missing that becomes a clue. It could be someone missing or the loss of the senses of smell. The Point of View character could be blindfolded or temporarily deaf. Someone might have been pickpocketed, or “Dude, where’s my car?”

WRITING EXERCISE: Write about a void. Something is missing: an object or a person or something that had been registering on one of the senses. Per normal, this is an exercise. Keep it under 500 words and post below if you want.

My attempt: Silence of the Forest (7/19/2026) is based on the lack of sound. This is a device often used in fantasy: The FoResT GOes siLENT!! But often you don’t “hear” it go silent because nothing was heard before. Yes, the characters might have been talking, but the readers haven’t been told about all the noise the forest is making all the time. The fact it went silent isn’t impactful. I wanted to see how it would work if I built sound into everything within the story. How do you think it worked, specifically in relation to help the audience hear the forest go silent. 

Writing Exercise: The Purchase Funnel

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“Stick Like Glue until Chapter Two” – this is what you need to sell a book now-a-days. Today’s writing assignment is an advanced one, related to the recent Unputdownable posts (see the writing exercise last month Unputdownable (6/4/2026)). If you want to write to sell, either to a publisher or a reader, you need to get the reader’s attention.

Selling books works several different ways. Word of mouth is a favorite. The person already is aware of you; we all have auto-buy authors.

But essential to all of these is the first sale, and the second, and the third. Word of mouth doesn’t happen until a sale happens. Auto-buy doesn’t happen until that first book sale happens.

Most sales are based on the Free-Look-Inside (Amazon) or Pick up the book in the book store and read the first chapter. Somehow the book needs to be Unputdownable from the very start.

The cover provides awareness of the book. The first sentence of the book needs to grab enough interest to get them to read the first paragraph. The first paragraph needs to engage enough to get a reader to scroll through the first page. The first page needs to raise enough desire to get them to read the first chapter. And the first chapter activates the action to buy the book.

As a writer, your job is to craft that first sentence, first paragraph, first page, and first chapter to sell the book. Either to a publisher or a reader (and really, if to a publisher, it will eventually be to a reader). How do you make them buy the book? How do you keep them burning with questions and interest to make that first chapter draw them through to purchase?

WRITING EXERCISE: Concentrating on your first chapter, what techniques can you use to activate the Interest-Desire-Action cycle to a purchase? What have you learned gets people interested quickly? What questions do you need to ask yourself to hone that first chapter? Share your thoughts below.

My Attempt: The first thought that pops into my head is have I started the book in the right place. Am I where things change? Second, have I defined the character enough to interest people? The trade-off of character development and plot-defining action; does my reader know the story AND the character they are signing up to take this ride with. Is the reader invested enough to invest in me?

I guess then the next thing is look at that first sentence – am I describing the grass or the snake in the grass? Look at the first paragraph, what is actually happening with it. First page, first scene, first chapter. I hate the tradeoff between story and first book sale, be there has to be a little. Later, if I get a book sold, I can back off of this front-load work, but the first book is the funnel of sentence to paragraph to page to chapter to sale. If I want to do sales.

Off to get the “Stick like glue until chapter two” in place.

Writing Exercise: Unputdownable

Erin Penn 1 Comment

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Last month I had an Editing Rant (Chapter Ending Questions 5/12/2026) and recommended an Other Cool Blog (Alyssa Matesic – Unputdownable 5/28/2026) on the topic of creating chapter endings which pull a reader through a story, making it Unputdownable (yes, still a word!).

Today’s writing exercise is to wordsmith a work-in-progress (WIP) chapter ending to pull the reader.

In grade school we are taught to end chapters with bows. The advice of “beginning, middle, and end” within a chapter, creating an arc, wasn’t defined, except for the end – you need to END a chapter.

But you don’t, not really. Only when the story ends, and even then leave threads for people to think on – for future series, for fan fic. But most importantly, for the Zeigarnick Effect. By leaving just a little unfinished, not completely closing the door, just making sure the core questions are answered for satisfaction, the reader continues to think about your story. This means they will recommend your story to others because they thought about it. They will remember you as a writer, because your satisfied them but also left them something more to think on. The story is both finished and unfinished. Not a cliffhanger, but what happened next; yes the MC and the romantic interest got together, but did they ever decide what color to paint the house. Silly little questions, but enough for the reader to keep filling in the story for a while.

The chapter-ending Zeigarnik effect, the raising of suspense to make the book unputdownable, shouldn’t be silly little questions. It should raise tension, making the reader go “just one more page.”

Remember Alyssa Matesic’s five ways to raise suspense at the end of your chapter (see her video for more details about each of these options – https://youtu.be/8ir5S0Nb_f4?si=MU0dVRr9o57uBdAt): (a) ask a question; (b) create an obstacle; (c) drop a bomb; (d) end with an unresolved emotion; (e) add a time constraint.

WRITING EXERCISE: Go over your present WIP and look at each chapter ending, the final paragraph. Do they do one of the five ways of raising suspense? Write which type of option you use (a-e or 1-5, however you have them written down). Are they all the same, or limited to just two of the options? Fix one of your chapter endings. In the comments, post the final three sentences you started with and what you restructured the ending to be (final three sentences, more or less).

My attempt: I tend to use the “end on a question” option the most. The ending of “Teamup Road Trip” which appeared in the A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to P-Con was as follows.

“So, number three?” Onyx asked.

Annie paused before answering, “Hopefully after the con.”

It ends the story, but as typical of the superhero genre, I left a “to be continued” at the end of the story.  A what happens next which will make the reader want to run out and get the next comic book or, in this case, the next anthology (due out around the September 2026 convention!).

I used both the “ask a question” but also a “unresolved emotion” technique, with a little bit of a “time constraint” tossed in. Things happen in threes in this universe, but the third thing hasn’t happened yet. The call-to-action sword is hanging over the superheroes when all they want to do is take the weekend off and attend the con. We know, as readers who love the genre, that the third thing isn’t going to wait until after the con. Something is going to happen at the Dallas P-Con convention.

Is it a cliffhanger? No, because the story was “What happened on the way to P-Con.” They dealt with an emergent, a medical emergency, and picking up the guest-of-honor for the convention from the airport as a disaster-movie level blizzard hits. But at the end, they had arrived! The story is tied up.

Now let’s look at the chapter endings themselves. I can’t change them at this point, the story is published, but it should be an interesting visit.

Chapter 1: Manuel stepped back as Annie started the engine, giving them a little wave as they backed out of the drive and headed into Austin late morning traffic to get on I-35.

No tension here. This is ending the establishment of “normal” and starting the trip. It is early in the story and the first chapter was about getting to know the characters and liking them. The reader isn’t likely to put down the book at the end of chapter 1. The question is “what is about to happen?” I guess it is enough to say option (a), maybe.

Chapter 2: “Maybe she is hiding it, maybe she is—” As they watched the drama of the last car, the fists the angry driver had been shaking at the agents suddenly formed crackling white plasma around them.

Chapter 2 definitely ends with (c) Drop a Bomb.

Chapter 3: As it was, the blast was contained. Only those within the globe faced the consequences of the explosion.

Returning to my favorite ending-type for chapters, (a) Question: What happened to our MC who was in the center of that globe!!!!

Chapter 4: “No, she isn’t in a coma, but her entire system is out of whack enough there is a danger if I don’t get her to a specialist…

This time a (e) time constraint has been added to the story. Up until now, our heroes have all day to meander to the convention and Orb and Angel are arriving the night before, so even more time. Now, “there is a danger if I don’t get her to a specialist” soon. This ticking clock will increase throughout the next chapter.

Chapter 5: “Hold your horses. It ain’t like nobody’s dying on you.” — “That’s debatable.”

The (e) time constraint is coming due, mixing with the (a) question of “will Orb survive?”. This is the strongest pull through, except I didn’t end on that note. The chapter actually concluded with : The door started rolling up. Angel moved her compact car forward as soon as it fit under the metal. Once she was inside, the door rolled down behind the vehicle.

This ending leaves the scene unresolved. But it could be considered a clear cut scene ending. The character “walked through a door.”

Not the best choice. But I also wanted to create a feeling of claustrophobia in the next POV character. She was enclosed in a situation she didn’t understand. The door closing was important for her emotions. Not everything is driven by chapter endings; techniques are used for storytelling, they are only tools to shape plot and characters into a narrative. Not every tool is needed for every situation.

The superhero story continues with another three chapters. (It was 20,000 words.) Once I get the rights back to both Teamup Road Trip and its sequel, I hope to publish both in one volume with a side story about Vicky and maybe what happened with the ancient ghost  dire bear. Stay tuned!

Oh, and don’t forget to do this writing exercise yourself.