Category: Writing Exercise

Writing Exercise: Fancy That

Erin Penn Leave a comment

Photo by Alvin Mahmudov on Unsplash

“Clothes maketh the man.” is often quoted in books and film. A bit pretentious, but also very true. They give a person confidence, or allows them to hide. Fabric can provide protection or make life dangerous.

What does it bring to the table for your character? For this writing exercise, we will be exploring what your character wears.

WRITING EXERCISE: Define what your character wears in different circumstances. Describe three different outfits – a work day outfit, nighttime attire, and a special occasion for example.

Here are some questions to think about why developing your character’s wardrobe:

  1. What is the fanciest and/or most expensive thing your character has ever worn?
  2. What are their favorite colors for clothes and do they actually look good in those colors?
  3. What do they wear around the house?
  4. Do they wash their own clothes? Do they shop for their own clothes?
  5. Would they repair their clothes or buy new? Have they ever borrowed or bought used clothes?
  6. Do they were clothing to match society? Are they cutting edge or behind?
  7. How much does their clothes costs, and how often do they upgrade them?
  8. Do they wear anything for protection?
  9. What do their shoes look like, and do they own more than one pair?
  10. Accessories are life: Watches, hair ribbons, earrings, lapel pins, rings, gun handles, hats, etc. How much accessories does your character choose?
  11. How does your character’s wardrobe look beside their friends and associates?
  12. How well can your character fight in the outfit?

SELF-CARE EXERCISE: Dress up. No particular reason, just put on a nice outfit, comb out the hair. Just be fancy.

Comment below about how either exercise helped you.

Writing Exercise: Self-Care Time

Erin Penn Leave a comment

Photo by Alisa Anton on Unsplash

I constantly talk about BICHOK (butt in chair, hands on keyboard). This is essential for production writing. Telling stories to myself in my head makes me happy, but if I want to publish, they need to come out of the fingers.

The challenge is not only finding time to stay in the chair working, but stay HEALTHY while staying in the chair. Sun, food, water, movement, and friends keep the body and heart moving. Today’s writing exercise is to develop a self-care reward or routine.

WRITING EXERCISE OPTIONS – DO ONE TODAY

  1. Spend five to ten moments outside during daylight hours. Feel the sun on your face.
  2. Use a smaller water glass, to make yourself get up from the desk regularly.
  3. Make a meal at least once every other day that is worth eating, not just fuel. Eat it away from screens (TV, phone, computer) – maybe on the porch or with friends. No phone; no doomscrolling. Concentrate on the experience of eating.
  4. Get up and stretch once an hour – up on tiptoes, out to the bookshelves either side, down to the floor (might have to bend at the knees). Turn around in a circle and sit down.
  5. Text or email three friends or family today, just because.

Which of these do you think will feel like a reward for you and which a chore? Any other suggestions on simple pick-me-ups or ways to keep the mind and body healthy while writing? Comment below.

Writing Exercise: Create a Collage

Erin Penn Leave a comment

Photo by Gareth David on Unsplash

A picture is worth a thousand words, but can it create a story?

(<-Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash)

Collages come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. They can be cut from books or photos or drawing. Cloth, sparkles, and pressed plants. Scrapbooking is one of the many presentation methods.

For both the reading and writing exercises, the challenge will be to make a collage. You can do it on a computer or just paper, glue, and anything else handy.

READING EXERCISE: Create a collage about your most recent book. Comment below what you aimed to share – the emotion of the book, the characters, the landscape, or something else entirely.

WRITING EXERCISE OPTIONS:

  1. Create a collage, then write a flash or scene about it. Share how the collage and flash interacted below.
  2. Create a collage about your present work in-progress. Share if the collage gave you new insight to your book, or why you think it didn’t add anything.
  3. Have a scrapbooking friend (or you child) create a collage for you for which you then write a flash or scene.

Writing Exercise: Y is for Yoke

Erin Penn 5 Comments

Photo by Steven Ungermann on Unsplash

Normally, this post would be titled “Heating the White Box” or something like that, but it’s April and I’m in the middle of the A-to-Z blog – and do you know how hard it is to find a “Y” word? So Y is for Yoke, as in – yoking the scene to reality. Today will be a writing exercise related to description.

I know most of us have heard the story about the English Teacher asking student why the thought the author made the curtains Blue. Description can enhance theme, but sometimes the curtains are Blue because they are Blue.

As a writer, when writing flash and short stories, work to have all description pull extra weight, where Blue has a reason for being part of the story beyond making sure the room is not just a white box. (Although that is a legitimate reason to make the curtains Blue.)

Oh, some of today’s readers might not be familiar with the White Box concept. Newer writers often have one skill set they are good at and need to develop others – they might be good at plot, or description, or characters, or dialogue – and when they write a scene, the other aspects are underutilized. For example, a dialogue writer could have two characters talking to each other, but they don’t interact with the room – does it have furniture, are they indoors or outdoors, why are they in this room and not elsewhere? They are in a “white box”, an empty stage.

To break the white box, the characters need to interact with the room. Today, though, the writing exercise is have it be heavier than just description. Yoke the description to the story in some way. Bonus points for giving a Show instead of Tell of a secondary aspect to the story. The characters walk across the wooden floor and the taps on their shoes ring (letting us know they are tap dancers). The characters do dishes which can carry all kinds of relationship and emotional signals. The characters sit down in heavy carved chairs, one higher than the other, indicating status in the fantasy world without expressly stating one is more powerful than the other.

WRITING EXERCISE: Write a dialogue flash with one bit of scene description that pulls extra weight. A little more complicated than normal, aim for 100 to 200 words.

My Attempt: In Argumentative Law – M is for Monday (see links below), I had the heat kick on. I did this to indicate that the class was held in the late fall to early winter in the Northern hemisphere, as would be common for the first semester of a college course. While all the other aspects of the room, from the chairs to where the teacher stood in relation to the class, are fairly generic, I added this to set the class in time and place without expressly stating it. 

Argumentative Law series

  1. L is for Legality (4/14/2024)
  2. M is for Monday (4/15/2024)
  3. O is for Options (4/17/2024)
  4. Editing Rant: Q is for Quorum (4/19/2024)
  5. Writing Exercise: Y is for Yoke (4/28/2024)

U is for Unite Against Book Bans

Erin Penn 1 Comment

Unite against Book Bans – Website: https://uniteagainstbookbans.org/

“Let’s Focus on What Kids Need – Books that Engage and Challenge Them.” post written by William Rodick. 8 November 2023. (https://uniteagainstbookbans.org/lets-focus-on-what-kids-need-books-that-engage-and-challenge-them/ – last viewed 11/17/2023)

My whole life has been centered around intellectual property and intellectual services: programming, writing, websites, taxes, editing, painting, embroidery. The list goes on. My business and the businesses I have worked for, small and large, require free dissemination of information. Book Bans actively harm my business.

Plus banning books just hurts. Hurts me as a reader. Hurts our children. Hurts our society.

Especially when the banned books are chosen because they present uncomfortable truths.

We must stop this censorship. When you vote this year, pick the school board carefully. Pick the school administrators and the board of education carefully. And make sure your legislative and executive representatives understand banning books is not acceptable.

WRITING EXERCISE: Write a letter to a local school board member or your legislator(s), letting them know how you feel about book censorship.