Category: Writing Exercise

Other Cool Blogs: Lucy Blue Writes 10/9/2019

Erin Penn 1 Comment

Photo by Nery Zarate on Unsplash

Hey you, yeah, YOU.

So how is that New Year’s resolution to write more coming?

I know, I know. January is COLD, and you have to recover from the holidays, and everyone is back at work demanding why the things that needed to get done on a schedule are behind like half the workforce hadn’t been off for two weeks of the last six.

You are exhausted, stressed, and miserable – maybe even feeling a real cold coming on.

I get it. Believe me.

So does Lucy Blue. Back in October, she wrote a post Ways to Keep Writing When You Can’t. Look them over and see if you can get back in the saddle on those resolutions. Remember, just because you slipped doesn’t mean you have failed.

Meme created by Erin Penn

WRITING EXERCISE: Comment below what your New Year resolution is for writing and how far you made it before your first slip. What do you plan to do next?

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(1) Keep the momentum going from NaNoWriMo 2019 – at least an hour in chair every day, doing at least 500 sellable works. (2) Finish and publish two books this year. (3) Keep up on blog and vlog and patreon.

Tax start put a dent on this right from the start – but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to continue to try every day this year. This is my year!

Editing Rant: Recommending Others

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

You may have followed my struggle in November during NaNoWritMo to catch up on the blog, including and especially the Author Spotlights. It was a struggle to create over thirty of them. So why do I do it?

Recommending Others.

This is part of the business.

In many industries, others in the business are competition. Publishing is much closer to farming than manufacturing in nature. The ground needs to be prepared and constantly taken care of to produce a product – in this case the audience needs “food” faster than a writer can prepare it by themselves. By recommending others, a writer keeps their audience in the reading mood and, at the same time, keeps themselves in the audience’s mind while waiting for the next “harvest” to come in.

Farmers who live near each other, or writers in the same genre or same convention circuit, trade ideas and techniques to produce the best product possible. They support each other, help each other to keep their environment healthy, and create a community.

Ways writers do this include providing blog tours, hosting writer groups, and talking other people’s books up during conventions. I personally do it through book reviews, author spotlights, other cool blog posts, attending a book club, and including a featured book on my video Editing Rants.

So if you decide to join this crazy industry, remember to talk up other authors and their books. It might be the connection you need with your audience.

WRITING EXERCISE: Do one thing to promote other people’s work today. Recommend a book on Facebook, talk up a book with a friend, write a book review, attend a book club, make a blog post, etc. Write in the comments below to give other people ideas. Include a link to what you did, if it is linkable.

Other Cool Blogs: Magical Words 8/17/2009

Erin Penn

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Magic Systems

Last month, the Magical Words posting from A.J. Hartley talked about Too Much Power. This week I thought I would circle back to an old post from David B. Coe on magic systems.

Magic in fantasy and powers in superheroes contain an affinity for exponential growth, reaching Too Much Power without much effort. The challenge is reigning in the power systems to make the story as much fun to read as it was to create the powers. 

Mr. Coe suggests three structures to control the systems:

  1. Limitations – Example, planetary gravity wells are limited to a certain distance from the planet.
  2. Costs – Example, escaping gravity takes propellant.
  3. Rules – Example, all matter is affected by gravity. Energy is not affected by gravity.

Be careful introducing exceptions to the rules to make your life as a writer easier. Gravity doesn’t get to change its rules. Well, it shouldn’t. I am sure some physicists will have a conversation with the universe creator someday about the deus ex machina of light which is both energy and matter.

The full post is here:

WRITING EXERCISE: Create one power or take one from a work in progress (WIP), just one power, for a fantasy, sci-fi, or superhero world. Define a limitation, cost, and two rules. Write a flash of 50-1000 words based on it.

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Ancestral warrior. Limitation – most powerful in the ancestral lands, close to normal outside of the lands. Cost – obligation to protect all those of the tribe from those lands. Rules – (1) Lineage/blood-line only. (2) Peak physical, but not natural spell caster.

Look for the story Ancestral Warrior to be published Sunday 1/5/2020. You may recognize the protagonist if you have been following this blog for a while. This is where Honestly meets its Atlantis Wardens beginnings.

Writing Exercise: Movie Retrospect

Erin Penn 1 Comment

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A friend of mine Facebooked a question of what movies to show to her teenage daughter. You often see these requests on social media.

It is an interesting exercise to see what you value. In previous writing exercises, I have suggested assembling a list of  childhood favorite books to see what common threads draw you into a story  and a review of things you have written to see what your personal writing style is, specifically what skills you use and what you need to work on.

Movies are a different medium than writing on several levels: (1) Writing usually involves one person (not counting the editor); (2) Dialogue can be nuanced with the voice in movies; (3) Visual really makes a difference. But at the heart, both books and movies are still about story and characters.

WRITING & READING EXERCISE: Assemble a list of movies which you have watched and would recommend to others for enjoyment, not educational purposes. What are their common themes? Do these match fictional books you enjoy and/or your personal writing style? What would you like to take from them to enhance your writing? How is your movie watching and your reading different?

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My initial recommendation to my friend: Big Trouble in Little China (1986), Bugsy Malone (1976), and Johnny Dangerously (1984). What do all these have in common? They created new and consistent worlds, had amazing characters and even more amazing dialogue, and solid humor based on just being alive.

Johnny Dangerously had some meanness to it. Another Michael Keaton movie also is humorous, character-driven, and crazy-worldbuilding, but the meanness crosses the line and I never really enjoyed it. You may have a different opinion about Beetlejuice, but I would not recommend the movie. Comparing these two movies side-by-side you can see where my personal line of “meanness in humor” is.

After my initial recommendation, I had a long drive and come up with several more selections:

GENERAL MOVIE: Beverly Hill Cop I & II (1984, 1987), Ferris Bueler’s Day Off (1986), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Cool Runnings (1993)

FANTASY/SCI-FI: Star Wars: A New Hope & Empire Strikes Back (1977, 1980), Indian Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Dark Crystal (1982)

MUSICAL: Sound of Music (1965), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)

Grouped together, the world building screams out. While I have seen several character-driven movies, I need world-building before character building kicks it into the next level. On the other hand, having an amazing world is not enough – if the characters and humor don’t work, for example, The Matrix is an amazing world but the characters and humor are lacking. As always creating a writer’s exercise has taught me a lot about what I value – upbeat, hopeful, smiles, and a working world.

Happy holidays, everyone.

Other Cool Blogs: Magical Words 5/14/2010

Erin Penn

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I’ve got a confession to make: I like running Monty Hall campaigns. I just love giving out magic items when I DM (dungeon master). I like making them and passing them out like candy … and I tend to introduce gods to a campaign way too early.

Too Much Power syndrome.

But it’s so much fun. Strangely, this doesn’t translate over to my writing much. I mean, sure, in flashes where there isn’t going to be a day-in day-out, multi-sequel build – hit god-level all I want (which, again, isn’t often – the I am Prophecy series being the exception which proves the rule). I also prefer science fiction in my writing and avoid fantasy, but when I roleplay I like the fantasy games and not the science fiction. 

Anyway, I would like to focus on the Too Much Power issue today – which A.J. Hartley (a living embodiment of TMP in real life as a NY Times best-selling writer and the Robinson Distinguished Professor of Shakespeare at UNC Charlotte) talks about in Wrestling the TMP on Magical Words.

In my present campaign, I have let the warlock have his demon be a mouse he carries around in his pocket during the initial session. TMP from the get-go. I used it to bring a character back from the dead during the third or fourth session. The party was second level at that point. Do you have a headache yet – because I’ve just set up a huge issue with TMP in the campaign.

The only way to reign things in was limit the power. The resurrected character paid dearly for being brought back – with some interesting bonuses thrown in, but he won’t be risking his life on another round trip anytime soon. And the warlock also is unsure about the cost he had to pay to survive the consequences of bothering his patreon. 

The comment section of the Magical Word post goes on about Costs and Limitations when a TMP is introduced. (Be sure to read it.) Maybe I can’t back out of my Monty Hall actions, but the TMP benefits can be modified.

The ability to modify is something to keep in mind should I ever write an Urban Fantasy serial. So many expand beyond reasonable too quickly, increasing the costs of the TMP may the way to go. And it can add some interesting plot twists as well. I can’t (or at least shouldn’t) change cannon, but what isn’t discussed yet is open season.

Again, the link for Dr. Hartley’s post and related comments is:

READING EXERCISE: Think about a television show, movie, or book – even your own work-in-progress – which has a TMP person or object. How did the writers work around it? Did they randomly shut it down (like the example Dr. Hartley provided) or was there a “leash” built into the power? How did the TMP help or hinder the storyline?

(Additional comment: Superhero stories are rife with the TMP syndrome, but for the villains and the heroes.)