Category: Writing Exercise

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?

Writing Exercise: Power of POV Part 1

Erin Penn

Image from the Clue Game

The world is a little crazy right now, so I thought a longer writing exercise might be nice as a distraction.

The Point of View (POV) of a narrative has a couple major considerations.

First, what style do you want?

The intimacy of first person (maybe switching the first person between two characters). This style is popular with superheroes, detective stories, young adult (YA), and romances. I’ve seen the switching between heads of the hero and villain and the two romantic leads. Both one head and two can be effective. This format is important when exploring the feelings of individuals (romances) and when exploring the thought process of a person (detective stories). Young adult stories tend to have at least one of the plots focus on coming-of-age and the emotional growth of the focus character.

Second person, used very rarely and seems to be best used in horror stories when does rear its psycho head.

Close third person, which steps away from exploring emotion and thoughts of an individual focus the camera on one person. It lacks a touch of immediacy that the first person has, but allows the character to hide information from the readers. Even so, the journey is step-in-step with the main character so emotional bonds between the reader and the character emerge during the reading.

Multi-person third person is popular with epic fantasy and space opera, to capture the sprawling political action. It’s nearly required for the disaster genre, so characters may be killed without the story stopping. For disaster and war genres to be most effective, there needs to be a chance of some of the POV characters dying. Without the risk, they lose steam and multiple POVs allow for characters the reader is invested in to die.

Omnipresent third person has not been popular in recent times. Back when travel wasn’t easy, a wide camera was used to bring the world home to people. Now-a-days people no long live on top of each other and are more interested in why people do things than where the things happen. A more personal viewpoint is wanted. Even so, omnipresent still is used often in news reporting and professional writing, where the thing being reported is more important than the person reporting it.

Second, which character should be doing the reporting?

For a romance, the POV character is also the person falling in love. This is because the romance genre is about exploring the feelings. It’s why the reader is reading the genre, for the serotonin hit, a wonderful lift to an emotional state.

In YA, the POV character is the one going through the emotional journey.

But in both romance and YA, I have seen them done as close third-person where the best friend is observing. These variations tend to be mash-ups when a lot of humor or a lot of horror thrown into the romance. Another “break the rules” in POV is when the detective of the mystery is too outside the norm for people to really identify with them. Cozy mysteries with their little old ladies or other every-day-joe-joanne thrive in first person. But procedurals with specialized experts or Sherlock Holmes, authors often use a secondary observer, like Dr. Watson, who are a little more human, a little more emotionally involved, to pull a reader in.

In close third-person, do you want an actor or an observer to be the focus of the camera? For the wide-range third-person, which of many characters should be the main POVs and which might need one chapter? Do you want the general, his aide, or a private reporting the matters in a room? Should a Star Fleet Captain or the person crawling in the tubes talk about the battle? When in court, should a noble or a servant be more effective in describing the action and the story to the reader?

POV is important. The person telling the story changes the story. The private might talk about the loss of his buddy where the general may rage about losing the war. Which is more important to the plot? Which becomes the plot?

WRITING EXERCISE: Today is an exploration of multi-viewpoint, third-person. Write a scene with three POV characters – with at least two different genders, two different age brackets, and two different social stratus involved. (Example two men and one women, one child and two adults, one servant and two upper class.) The scene should be at least two hundred words and no more than three thousand.

This writing exercise is the first part in a four-part series on POV. More next month.

***

My Attempt

Flash Title: In the Billard Room with the Lead Pipe

Slamming open the heavy wooden carved doors, Colonel Mustard barged into the lounge where Miss Scarlet and Mrs. White played a game of checkers. “Mrs. White, I’m surprised to find you here.” Accusation shot from his voice.

“Whatever for, sir? Dinner is not needing plating for another hour and the young miss needed a distraction after changing from her horseback lessons with Mr. Green.” Wendy said, looking up from the game. The fifteen year old she was playing against had managed to collect another king, so any distraction, even from the stuck up solider, was a welcome one. And maybe he would take over, since, as much as she liked the girl, Wendy had many other duties with a house full of guests and keeping young ones out of mischief was low on the list. Miss Scarlet’s father barely paid attention to her, and the child already escaped her tutor for a number of escapades several times this week, much to the horror and amusement of the rest of the participants of Lord Boddy’s house party and it wasn’t even Thursday. Yesterday’s transgression ended up ruining the teen’s dinner gown, making her tutor, Mrs. Peacock, burst into tears and retire to her room with a headache, and tied up the staff for hours with special requests to help her recover. “What do you be needing me to do, sir?”

The colonel growled, taking a few more steps into the lounge, “I need you to–”

He stopped speaking when Professor Plum put a hand on his shoulder. Now that was a right one, that one, if a bit on the spooky side. If only he paid more attention to Miss Scarlet. He said he taught at University, but none of the staff had heard where and his daughter laughed when asked, saying they were on sabbatical again. It seemed like he was one of Lord Boddy’s friends from Those Days, the ones the veteran staff never talk about but give each other lingering looks before changing the topic.

The whole lot at the party seemed to be from Those Days. Reverend Green made her skin crawl, even though his son was a delight. Colonel Mustard, rumored had, wasn’t allowed out of the country for the secrets still locked in his head. Sir Black ran a little young for the crowd, but his wife, Dr. Orchid exchanged barbs with the Colonel at every meal. Everyone exchanged barbs with the prickly Colonel, though Dr. Orchid and Prince Azure particularly delighted in it while the Colonel’s wife had drunk herself under the table each night and needed to be poured into bed.

“Now, Martin. Caution is warranted.”

The blustery military man deflated. “But Plum, we must–”

“Wait on the arrival of the police.” Professor Plum’s voice held a cold edge, like a knife freshly pulled out of the snow. “Detective Silver is in route as we speak.”

“Police?” Wendy’s voice squeaked. “Now why would be needing them, and a detective at that.”

“There has been an accident.” Professor Plum eyes slid over the two females, carefully avoiding contact, giving Wendy the impression of heavy mist on the countryside hiding everything.

The Colonel snorted. “If running face first into a lead pipe several times in the billard room could be an accident.”

***

Peter gritted his teeth as the two women screeched. Marty had the subtly of a drunken sailor on shore leave. Having the police investigating this particular group of people will be bad enough, adding hysterics to the proceedings will only make matters worse. He never should have come, even it if had been one last chance of the group getting together. Once Adam’s father passed later this year from the cancer he had been fighting for four years, Prince Azure will become King Azure. Even though he had custody of his daughter for the summer and usually stayed in the states, for Adam, he came to this small house party, a gathering of people whom managed to delay a world war long enough for it to fade into a forgotten nightmare.

The nightmare seemed to be back, with the body of Lord Boddy, the host of the party, dead in his own Billard’s Room. Twenty blows with a lead pipe left behind at the scene of the crime.

Pity the killer hadn’t used poison. Then Peter could have claimed the death and gotten the not-inconsiderable outstanding bounty on his old friend. No one would believe that Professor Plum would use anything as gauche as lead pipe. He already texted his ex to see if anyone was directing the bounty to a Swiss account. Knowing how professional the killer was would narrow the field.

Leaving the Colonel in the doorway, the old spy crossed the deep green carpet to the table with the marble inset checkerboard. Pulling up the appearance of compassion and assurance took little effort after years of practice as he bent down in a crouch, putting a hand on both the women’s knees. “I’m sure Marty,” he chose to use the nickname deliberately knowing how much the Colonel hated having his name shortened, but Peter was miffed, “didn’t mean to startle you. Mrs. White, please go and help Monsieur Brunette finish the meal preparations. Detective Silver will be here with Officer Peach in about an hour. We should eat before they get here, otherwise we will be very hungry by the time they finish with all our statements.”

“But, sir, a murder, a body, how can we possibly eat, how can I–”

Peter squeezed her knee through the thick fabric of her uniform, hoping not to have to strike the woman across the face to get her hysterics under control. All they needed is more questions. “Madam, Mrs. White, please. The children.” He nodded towards his daughter whose eyes were as wide as dinner plates seeing an adult fall apart, and ready to fall down the cliff after her as adolescents are want to do.

Being British took over the housemaid, bless her stiff-upper lip control. “Of course, sir. The children will need feeding.” She stood, wobbling a little and knocking the checkerboard table, scattering several pieces, before hurrying out of the room past Colonel Mustard.

“Father, is it …” His daughter gulped, “is it really murder? Right here, in this house?”

Peter knew how broken he was from his actions during the not-war. He could offer is daughter little that a human needs, but he made a promise to offer himself and her one thing without hesitation. The truth in all things. “Yes. It has to be murder.”

And not of passion. Those blows were too precise, though maybe the police might not notice under the sheer number of them. A murder of passion could be framed on one of the servants. An investigation into the motives of a premeditated murder would open too many boxes that needed to stay close among the clique attending the party.

“Come, let’s clean up the game, then wash up for the meal.”

***

Martin stormed out of the room after Plum cut him off and embarrassed him. The Professor was far too full of himself because of all his learning and travels. While he had to stay close to home because of secrets and codes he had memorized, Plum merrily transferred from university to university teaching exotic math classes of the very codes Martin had memorized so diligently. He punch the delicate yellow silk wall covering, gently, so he wouldn’t break his hand again. It wasn’t nearly as satisfying as punching through plasterboard, but most rooms in Boddy’s Cluedo manor were solid through and through, able to stand through the centuries.

He growled at his wife as he passed her, telling her he was going to change for dinner. As normal, putting on his uniform calmed him and when the butler, Wadsworth, came by to announce dinner he was fit for company again so long as Orchid kept her trap shut. She wouldn’t and he couldn’t use his old method for keeping her under control, not since she married Black in a weird transformation of giggles and pinks. When they were together, it had been whips and handcuffs.

He missed that. And carefully gather the thought up and locked it into its closet in the backmost part of his mind. His wife had not responded well the two times he attempted something beyond vanilla with her. Divorcing her at this late date wasn’t an option; everything they owned was still in her name even after fifty years of marriage.

Marching down to the main floor across the great hall into the dining room, he arrived to find insanity unleashed and his wife passed out on the floor with an empty bottle beside her.

(words 1,464; first published 3/24/2020)

Writing Exercise: Start at the End

Erin Penn

Photo by Daniel Lincoln on Unsplash – Adjusted by Erin Penn

Have you ever read a story out of order? Sometimes authors lead with the end of the story and the mystery is how the person ended up in that situation. “Dude, where’s my car?” and “The Hangover” are just two recent movie examples where people wake up after a night of debauchery wondering what happened to them and have to backtrack the night.

For writing, often a writer will drop readers in the middle of the action and in the second chapter backtracks a couple hours or days and fill in the backstory once the reader is hooked.

Today’s writing exercise is to create an out-of-order flash. Normally, this would be frowned on because the flash medium is too short for backstory and timeline confusion. But breaking the rules to learn a new skill is okay.

Often when setting up a story in this manner, the first action is set in present tense and the remembrance portion is written in past tense. When the action catches up to present, the verb tense returns to present tense.

Example starts: “I stopped digging when the hole was deep enough.” “Blood is not my color, but at least it was washing out.” “The hangover wasn’t bad until I moved my head into the sunlight. When I opened my eyes, I realized it wasn’t sunlight.”

Remember the mystery is how the person got from a “normal” state to their present craziness when writing timelines out of order. This focus keeps the reader on the hook until the end.

WRITING EXERCISE: Write out three things that will happen in a flash in time order, and then write the flash with #3 as the first piece of information presented.

***

My Attempt

Flash Title: Too Big
I stopped digging the hole when it was deep enough. Mud covered me from head to toe which covered the blood. I hoped the mess would wash out, but burning everything remained an option. I had a stack of wood under a lean-to close to the house from clearing underbrush this summer which would provide a good firestarter. I didn’t want to run around starkers at home, but I’ve done that before chasing kids when I was younger and fitter and the young escape artists were slippery from their baths. Somehow the clothes would be taken care of before I went inside.

I wasn’t tracking evidence inside my home.

I guess I should start at the beginning.

Yesterday was normal. Wake up, take the kids to school, drop the spouse off at work, run errands, do the laundry at home – walking the dog between loads and picking up after the kids and setting up for dinner and paying bills and the hindered of other tasks needed to keep a house of six people alive. I work weekends while Samantha works weekdays, that way someone is always home with the kids. It does mean the two of us don’t spend time together much, but considering number five is on the way, we do spend enough time together for some things.

Then I got a call from school. Mardi had gone missing with two other children off the playground. I don’t remember getting to the school, but the time between me hanging up the phone and signing in at the office was four minutes. The school is five miles away.

She was still missing when I got there, police were arriving behind me. One of them may have been following me for speeding. Don’t know, don’t really care, but I didn’t get a ticket for it. The two other missing kids were eleven year-old girls, dark hair, dark skin, just like my Mardi. She takes after her mother but has my high cheekbones and narrow nose from my Native American ancestors. The two other girls were also mixed races.

The police didn’t like that pattern at all.

Well, long-story short, since this story should be about 500 words. The police have the bodies of the human traffickers. Well, the low-level guys.

Their boss is too big to fail.

The clothes burned fine once they caught fire, and Sam hosed me down once I got out of the backwoods. Not my woods, mind, the woods owned by the guy too big to fail. One of my buds who wasn’t able to help me today already is calling in an anonymous tip about a suspected body being ditched.

Too-Big-to-Fail is going to have a bad day tomorrow. Worse than mine was today.

(words 459, first published 02/25/2020, 

Writing Exercise: Genderless

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

At my first college job, I ran into my first transgender situation. It was weird. This is because at the time Transitioning or anything LGBTQA+ was all hush-hush. Since the job required secret clearances, the person transitioning sent out a public announcement to the company about the upcoming surgeries and hormone therapies. In the company, being gay or having an affair didn’t matter so much as wanting to hide being gay or an affair – because then Spies could use that to blackmail you and steal secrets. To maintain their job, the person let everyone know.

And that helped shaped my view of the community. There was nothing wrong with being who you are; be up front and open about it. In college I also ran across the concepts of living together without marriage (ever), gay and lesbian relationships, bi-sexual, and polygamy. 

Later I learned about asexual as the internet let people know they weren’t alone with that rare variation of human sexuality.

In college, I also learned about hate and racism and gender crimes and all that horror. That shook my world far more than discovering my personal sexuality didn’t match other people. I just don’t get hating a person for who they are.

Well, I do. Being on the autism spectrum (and female), I’ve been the brunt of a lot of attacks varying from microagressions to firecrackers being thrown at me.

But you can’t change being on the spectrum. Learned behavior modifications control the majority of it – but I will never be “normal”. Why would I throw stones at anyone else for something they are born with?

At the end of the year (2019), I published the flash “Dumped“. The main character is the same as in “Lost Doorknobs” (2016). I’m not sure what the order of the two stories should be yet. I would like to continue this story line and eventually have the POV character start a romance instead of the present dumpster fire with the ex-.

The story is harder to write than most because I am endeavoring to have the POV character be genderless/not gender defined. I don’t know if they were born male or female, and in the end, it doesn’t matter because their genitals do not define them.

Have you ever written something with a character from the LGBTQA+ community, one that doesn’t match your sexuality?

WRITING EXERCISE: Write a flash from the LGBTQA+ community. Preferably asexual, transitioning, or genderless/gender queer. (Romance and Urban Fantasy has given most writers a fairly good handle on Lesbian, Gay, and Bi, as well as Poly relationships. But if you haven’t explored those variations in your writing, go for it.) The main character cannot match your personal sexuality.

Have them in a normal situation. Don’t have the flash centered around a hate act. Make them a person who is just dealing with something everyone deals with. For example, an ex- who is stalking them. Maybe making a dinner and a relationship bump when one member of the couple wants a child really bad (such as is in Special Night).

Did their sexuality change the story? What did you learn about yourself writing the story?