Category: Writing Exercise

Other Cool Blogs: Magical Words 1/16/2012 and 3/26/2012

Erin Penn

Ambition and Tenacity

Half of the year gone and not having half the goals met. Is that because the goals were too ambitious or my inner drive not tenacious enough?

What ambitions did you start the year with and what have you reached? Do you need a new set or to retool the old? Or just turbo charge that old tenacity?

When thinking about your goals, you might want to read the Magical Words – “On Writing: The Value of Ambition” by David B. Coe. It can be found here:

He mentions three ambitions:

  1. Material Ambitions – For me, this would be publication credits and sales numbers. Things I have no control over other than production.
  2. Output Ambitions – Which leads to Word Count, Complete Stories, and Anthology Submissions. To get #1, I have to meet #2.
  3. Creative Ambitions – How do I want to push myself as a writer?

In 2019, I started my patreon page at the beginning of the year (https://www.patreon.com/ErinPenn) and an Editing Rant Vlog (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4qqZ3dYm_OlXfecgzWRi1g) at the end of the year. One related to my material ambitions and the other related to my creative ambitions of exploring the video and sound field. In 2020, my goals include completing a novel and 500 words per day every day – both output ambitions.

I think I am ambitious enough, but am I tenacious enough for my ambitions?

Mr Coe covered that in “The Writing Life: The Value of Tenacity”:

The tenancies covered include:

  1. Day-to-Day Tenacity – That 500 words per day, or one hour, or every weekend or whatever it takes.
  2. Project Tenacity – Finishing that thing.
  3. Market Tenacity – Selling that finished thing somewhere.
  4. Career Tenacity – Finishing the next thing, and the next, and sell, and sell. Repeat.

For me, I think Project Tenacity is my major downfall. Between fighting the Oo-shiny syndrome and my mixed-up schedule forcing me to take a break a week at a time sometimes (or four months during tax season), once the “right now” issue settles and I reach to pick up an ongoing project, I rarely reach for exactly what I was working on before.

The dreaded “meeting week” being the worst offender. The second week of the each month I have a meeting Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, and Thursday night. I get NOTHING done this week other than meeting prep and meeting cleanup.  I collapse over the weekend (if it isn’t filled with a convention or other obligation) and try to restart the fires of ambition as soon as I can. I need to work faster so everything is completed in three weeks or figure out how to integrate the Meeting Week into an ebb-and-flow.

WRITING EXERCISE: Review this year’s goals. What have you been able to do and why? What has been a barrier? Should the goals be changed?

WRITING EXERCISE: Filling a White Room (The Power of Point of View Part 4)

Erin Penn

Photo by Zachary Keimig on Unsplash

Most people have a handle on either dialogue or narrative descriptions. The last few months we’ve been exploring a scene with three people. I’m betting for most people, that meant a lot of dialog was written since the emphasis was exploring on how a point of view (POV) style and character changes a story and plot.

POV also changes the narrative description. A farmer might notice that a soil is dry, while a potter remarks on the porcelain white clay properties. A vegetarian might find the smell of a cooking meat dish offensive, where a hungry person’s mouth waters.

WRITING EXERCISE: For the last three months of exploring POVs, three different scenes have been created. The focus during those writing exercises was on the people, now let’s look at the room.

Review them for the scene descriptions. How did the scene change each time? For the different POVs, did each character have a different aspect to the room focused on during their time in the spotlight? For the singular POV, how did the world narrow or expand? Did sight, scene, or smell rise in prominence? When changing genre, did the palate/color scheme change – did the world get brighter or dimmer? Did the furniture and/or landscape become harsher or softer?

With these considerations in hand, pick one of the three previous scenes and increase the narrative description, filling in the white box. Word count should increase by at least 10%. If one hundred words, the rewrite should be 110. If a thousand, at least 1,100 words should result.

Why did you pick that particular scene to work with? Comment below.

This is the conclusion of a four-part series on the Power of Point of View. Each part can be explored as a stand-alone exercise.
Part 1 – March
Part 2 – April
Part 3 – May
Part 4 – June.

WRITING EXERCISE: The Power of Point of View Part 3

Erin Penn

Photo from Unsplash.com

This is the third part in a four-part series. Each part can explored as a stand-alone exercise.

Two months ago we explored different point of views (POVs) in a scene and last month we concentrated on the “shoes” of an individual. This month we are going to look into the “world”. How people see the world and the world sees them changes the plot. The world in this case in genre – the prism of the action.

Boy meets girl seems to be a standard story. But what if the story isn’t a romance, but a horror? How about a YA coming-of-age? Or set in a science fiction?

Each genre creates a structure to the story. Just like the POVs do. As I mentioned in Part 1 of the Power of Point of View series, different genres have different focal point POVs. An Urban Fantasy – whose DNA borrows from thrillers, detective stories, romances, superheroes, and young adults (YAs) – runs into first person a lot with often an emotional focus or mental problem-solving. Science Fiction and Fantasy grew up together, focus more on exploring exciting new worlds, and therefore run to third person.

WRITING EXERCISE: Remember that scene with three different POVs you wrote two months ago and rewrote in first-person last month? This month change up the genre – if the focus was mystery, make it urban fantasy, or science fiction, or romance, etc. For the new genre, choose the best POV style to use (first, close-third, multi-third) and character(s). Word count should be between one hundred and three thousand.

WRITING EXERCISE: The Power of Point of View Part 2

Erin Penn

This is the second part in a four-part series. Each part can explored as a stand-alone exercise.

For most modern genre writing, first person and close third-person tend to be the most marketable choices. People like the “choose your own adventure” immediacy of these two POV styles. It drops them in the action.

It also increases sympathy for the character, putting the reader in the character’s shoes. The identification with the character increases toleration in the world. Exploring shoes outside what one normally wears can bring a new world to the door: patent leathers – sneakers – bare feet – crocs – hiking boots, combats, thigh-high high-heel boots, flip-flops. If one only is familiar with sneakers as a pair of shoes, how can one have sympathy with a person stuck in flip-flops but required to walk in the snow?

Remember that scene with the three different POVs you wrote last month? How the characters needed to be of different ages, social stratus, and genders? If you had to put each into a unique pair of shoes, what would they be wearing?

WRITING EXERCISE:  Write the scene from last month again, only in first-person from one of the characters’ POVs. Really concentrate in being in the “shoes” of this person. After you write it, post a comment below about why did you choose that particular character. Was it a plot decision, the character you most identify with, provides the best tie to the genre being aimed for? Describe their shoes in the comments. Word count should be between one hundred and three thousand.

My attempt

What shoes would they be wearing? Colonel Mustard – high-shined black leather dress shoes. Professor Plum – all weather short boots/high top leather shoes which tie up to just above the ankle. Deep purple in color (of course). Mrs. White – anti-slip nurse-type shoes, well worn and scuffed. Miss Scarlet – red low-heeled shoes,but strappy and with some sparkles or gemstones, and matching her dinner gown.

I chose Colonel Mustard as the first person character because Mrs. White isn’t emotionally invested in the action and doesn’t know the history of what is happening and Professor Plum isn’t as interesting, more a thinker than a doer. The Colonel has a ton of emotions, is action-oriented, and has a lot of self-conflict which will play out in the story. Mrs. White is an observer with little skin the game; Professor Plum could be the “cozy mystery” detective but would be better as a foil observed from the outside. The Colonel, he is going to break things and make mistakes.

Flash Title: In the Dining Room with the Knife

Editing Rant: Transitions

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of ddpavumba at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

This rant is based on a book I picked up while free on Kindle, and I am still annoyed at the time it took to read this.

It had absolutely no transitions. The characters suddenly transported from room to room.

Don’t want to deal with the woman being pregnant – put her to sleep with drugs (oh, but for the birth, the medical-center can’t give painkillers?). Skip to the next scene, skip to the next emotional highlight, skip, skip, skip to the end. The whole thing felt like it was on fast forward. 

No transitions and as boring as fast forwarding through a TV show.

While walking through doors, climbing into cars, and traveling between places is also boring, transitions are needed to let the reader know locations changed, time passed, and emotions may have calmed (or ramped up). Keep the transitions short. No need to bury the reader in the mundane, especially if writing a flash or short story, but do include an “end scene” moment and a “begin scene” moment which tie the two scenes together.

In An Infidelity of Hearts (11/24/2019), I have two scene transitions to execute.

The first between the table and the cage – which is done with a combination of the woman announcing she was leaving and draining her drink and a sharp scene break with “***” and she is suddenly at the cage. If I had closed the scene after she laid her cards down, winning the trick, but before she announced she was cashing out, that jump would have been too abrupt. See how it reads when I remove the transitional words between the scenes.

Smiling at the professional, she laid down her cards one-by-one. Nine, ten, page, jack, and finally queen high. All of the same suit, as red as her gown. Nicknamed an Infidelity of Hearts on this planet, as the king had been replaced by the jack and page in the queen’s chambers, spread before her.

***

The cage transferred her winnings back to the account where the money started, after Carin told them which tips to give to the tables she had worked that night.

The second transition is between leaving the club and waking up captured. It is a mashup transition, serving several purposes: a fast forward over the boring (walking alone and waiting to be jumped), providing backstory (why she actually was there), and entering the next scene (where she woke up).

I could have done the table to cage to walk to waking up without transitions, but that hurky-jerky story would not have been a pleasant read.

WRITING EXERCISE: Look at your present work-in-progress (WIP) and examine one of your transition moments. Why do you need it and what happens when you remove it? Is it a long transition, and does it serve more than one purpose?