Category: Writing Exercise

Writing Exercise: Listen to the Music

Erin Penn 1 Comment

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Every writer takes in inspiration through their senses, with some senses being stronger than others depending on the author. 

Me. I’m visual and touch. I see the scenes, feel the temperature, touch the surfaces. To write I need to be touching something – a keyboard or pen and paper. I’ve thought about DragonSpeak, but it doesn’t catch me on fire. To write, I just need to sit in my space with no distractions so I reach my inner space where things are happening. Sound is a big no-no for me.

Other people need other cues to write. Some people light a candle a favorite scent. Some people need certain lighting. Fuzzy clothing or other tactile trigger can indicate time to write. A nice cup of tea with a certain flavor not used any other time of day. So many rituals to activate the mind through the strongest sensory channel, letting it know TIME TO WRITE.

A lot of writers depend on music. For some, the music is part of the activation ritual only, not the ongoing process. They just listen to the song and approach the music for inspiration like I do visual prompt. Then turn off the music and write.

But most writers who employ music have it in the background to define the writing space.

David B. Coe listens to jazz. John Hartness has a certain playlist for when he writes fighting scenes. If you visit a coffee shop, you will see several writers with laptops and earbuds playing music. Many writers publish the “soundtrack” of their novel; music they listen to while creating or were inspired by for the story. Gibson House Press describes some in Novel Soundtracks (published November 19. 2018 – .

Me, when I hear words, they come out my fingers from my time doing transcription. But some people swear by it. Others want music without words. Sometimes people need words but can’t write with real ones so they work around the words interfering with their writing by listening to music in foreign languages.

Video game soundtracks are extremely popular because they are internally rewarding; they are built to be addicting and keep people doing the activity. (Looking for an outlet? – try Pandora’s Video Game Music Radio).

I’ve been remiss in not suggesting this sooner. Even though music is no-go for me (I listen to music for everything but writing), it may be the perfect thing for you.

WRITING EXERCISE: Explore Music with Your Writing. Go to Pandora or other music site, if you don’t have one already, and sample different types of music. Can you think of new words when hearing words? Does latino, classical, jazz, or video-game-experimental float your creativity? Think about your senses; which are your strongest for memory and interacting in the word outside of visual? For your starting ritual for writing (if you have one or think you need one), see what happens if you add a particular song or particular type of music. Remember for some writers, they only use music for particular types of writing – like fight scenes. Would that help you?

WRITING EXERCISE BONUS: Randomly pick one song. Can be through a large playlist or a random generator (like and use it as a prompt to write a flash.

Other Cool Blogs: Magical Words 3/11/2008

Erin Penn 1 Comment

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Picture a hand pointing a finger out in front of you, the rest of the fingers curling into the palm of the hand. Which finger is pointing out? Now rotate the hand so it is pointing to the right side, is the front or back of the hand facing you?

Were you able to do that?

Congratulations, you are the part of humanity which can visualize in pictures. Not everyone can, and that can make writing descriptions very difficult. I never realized people can’t see in pictures. Find out more about that in Visualization, a blog post Catie Murphy created for Magical Words, the full post is here:

WRITING EXERCISE: Do you Visualize and to what level do you visualize? Is it full color? Can you hear noises? Is music playing? Can you smell anything? Can you backup the action of the scene? How about rotate the camera angle or focus in on features? How can you use this in your writing?

If you don’t visualize, how do you create a scene? Do you build from the characters out? Do you start at the walls and work your way in? If you don’t see inside your head, can you smell, taste, or hear anything? Is there any advice in the Magical Word post that helps you?

Now, create a scene. Just pop one into your head (if visual) or figure out one you want to describe (if not visual). It needs to be a location that doesn’t actually exist for this exercise, think science fiction or fantasy. Now write out the description, include at least two senses to describe the scene.

READING EXERCISE: What books have provided the best visuals (or other scenes) for you? In your current read, is there a particular scene standing out? Why is it effective?

***

I’m a visual person. Sometimes when I am writing, I close my eyes and see the scene and put my characters in the scene. Strangely the people are darkened out – them I don’t see clearly, but the room and pieces, I can focus in on. Usually I have some sort of music playing too, not necessarily the noises related to the scene.

For Roulette Leadership, I can clearly picture the trench area the men are huddle in. Dirt and grime clings to them, blood splotches, sweat stains, smell of men hard-pressed. Broken green light and shadow flickers across the faces. If I ever expand the flash, I need to add a lot more description.

Writing Exercise: Belief Coins

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of Danilo Rizzuti at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In May, I ranted about Belief Coins, how there is only so much suspension of belief with a reader. Some of the breaks from reality are “discounted” because of the tropes of the genre: happily ever after in romance, heroic hero of thrillers, and solvable mysteries in the cozies. But because a trope is accepted in one genre does not mean a writer gets to hand wave and have it work in a different genre. Insta-love can appear in science fiction, but there had better be a reason for it, such as genetic programming predisposition supported by the psychic hive-mind of the humans colonists created by integration into the planet’s biosphere. Yes, that long explanation carries a whole bunch of hand-waving … but it builds a frame to explain the insta-love trope which isn’t a free coin.

Another example is Superman. I wrote about my problems with a Superman movie a while ago – where I was thrown out of the story because of disbelief; my ability to believe the impossible had been destroyed because of my inability to believe the improbable. Between normals breathing underwater for screaming, established worldbuilding thrown out the window, and character development being ignored, The Man of Steel did not buy a single Belief Coin needed to support the magic of the superhero trope.

So how can a writer buy Belief Coins? By making as much of the rest of the story grounded in reality. A ghost story? Have the main character have groceries go bad when frightened away by the apparitions. My erotic-romance Honestly novella has insta-sex, but balances that with the parent controlling her screams so not to wake her child. Superman, impossible alien, was raised by a childless couple in Kansas. For every unreal action, follow it by the very real to anchor it.

WRITING EXERCISE: Where are you spending the Belief Coins in your work-in-progress (WIP)? How many of them are genre-trope related? Count them up. And where do you have items to buy those coins – what grounds your book into reality? Do you have at least one “buy” before each “spend”. Do you have enough buys?

Geeking Science: Writing Prompts

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of Somkiat Fakmee at FreeDigitalPhotos.net4

Over at Mythcreants, they put together eight natural phenomena to use in your stories. These are really geeking cool science phenomena on Earth and in Space.

  1. Lake Vostok
  2. Ball Lightning
  3. Solar Flares
  4. Gamma Ray Burst
  5. Natural Nuclear Reactors
  6. The Space Roar
  7. Catatumbo Lightning
  8. The Great Science

Read the details at “Eight Natural Phenomena to Use in Your Stories”. https://mythcreants.com/blog/eight-natural-phenomena-to-use-in-your-stories/

WRITING EXERCISE: Our world is weird. Using one of the eight phenomena, or another weird science fact, write a flash. Science fiction, fantasy, urban fantasy, or other fantasy option – have the phenomena play a critical role in the turn of the story BUT remember the characters are the star.

Other Cool Blogs: Magical Words 7/2/2010

Erin Penn

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To a Bookstore We Go

Back in 2010, Stuart Jaffe wrote a great blog for Magical Words on how to use a visit to the bookstore to understand the publishing industry and marketing strategy by the publishers and the bookstores. Lots of great questions – I recommend to cut and paste and save. The full blog is here under the title Publishing – Learning at the Bookstore: http://www.magicalwords.net/really-i-mean-it/publishing-learning-at-the-bookstore/

The problem of implementing this strategy in 2019 is finding a bookstore. (sad face)

Instead, go to various eBook locations and see what they are doing in your genre section (and nearby sections). How are “also reads” being linked, do they show series for both novels and novellas, what shows up on your recommends when you first log in, etc? See if you can get a friend or even con someone at a Starbucks to help you do the research and set up your laptops side-by-side and see what different things show up. Can you get someone of a different gender, melanin level, or income strata to help you? What book recommends show up in your Facebook feed or social media sites and do they impact yours (and those helping you) purchases? 

Ask around, how does the casual reader find information versus a veracious reader versus someone connected to the industry?

Does being city or suburbia affect what they look at – and how their market share is reached?

As a writer, editor, or someone in the industry, you might want to do this exercise every year or two – since technology is changing that fast.

WRITING EXERCISE: Do a Market search and get a general feel. Next, guess based on the past, what changes you think you will see in two years? What techniques are equivalent to “book cover out” and “end display” within a bookstore and within eBook book websites, and what do you think they will become? Record your findings and guesses somewhere so you can track changes over time. Repeat in 2021.