Category: Writing Exercise

Other Cool Blogs: Writer Unboxed Feb 1, 2017

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A common recommendation to writers is to read outside their genre. Why? Exposure to other techniques which can enhance writing. Last year I shared a Horror blog revealing the secrets of monsters which easily has application in any genre forms with antagonists like Urban Fantasy or Thriller.

Writer Unboxed guest columnist Donald Maass (of the Donald Maass Literary Agency) wrote how to add A Touch of Romance to any genre. This is not a how-to write romance, but how to add a breath of love to a science-fiction or mystery. Whether the love is unrequited or triangle, young or old, new or mature, main character or secondary, romantic relationships add a level of realism to a story. Writers can exploit the emotional tool to raise the stakes or reduce the tension.

The list of question are perfect. Here are a few:

“Who in your story is single? Who wants love? Who can begin to love that character?”

See the whole list here: http://writerunboxed.com/2017/02/01/a-touch-of-romance/#more-46578. Remember to read the comments – Vaughn Roycroft is especially illuminating.

WRITING EXERCISE: From your stable of characters (either your present work-in-progress or previous flashes and shorts), pick a character not in a relationship and not looking for one. Create a flash where s/he has an encounter where a romance could develop if they choose to pursue the matter. Keep the original genre’s feel unless it is romance then change it up to strongly be one of the story’s subgenres. The point of the exercise is adding a touch of romance to a non-romance.

If you normally write romance, add a touch of horror to your romance instead. For a character who has the world on a string, create a flash with an encounter which adds a bit of scare.

Writing Exercise: Review of Book Reviews

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Review of my book reviews.

I average over 100 book read a year for the last few years, since I made a requirement to do a book review every time I read a book I’ve actually been able to keep track through my Goodreads count. I passed the magic 100 books in November 2017, which is when I am writing this post in preparation for tax season during my NaNoWritMo craziness.

I’m going to be way less than previous years (182 in 2015 and 128 in 2016). Each year I get a little less because I (1) don’t count books I edit and (2) don’t count books I slush read. As my editing and slush reading increases, the pleasure reading decreases.

With the magic 100 book level, I thought I would see if I raved or depraved too much. As an editor and author myself, I sometimes feel like I need to take it easy on other writers at which point I pull myself up by the shorts and remind me I am writing the book reviews to become a better editor and writer. If I don’t be honest about what I read, I can’t learn from it.

The review levels between Goodreads and Amazon allow me to give higher marks on Amazon reviews.

one star Goodreads “I did not like” / Amazon “I hate”
two star Goodreads “It was ok” / Amazon “I did not like”
three star Goodreads “I liked” / Amazon “It’s okay”
four star Goodreads “I really liked”/Amazon “I liked”
Five star Goodreads “It was amazing”/Amazon “I loved”

If you notice, a four on Amazon is equal to a three on Goodreads. So if someone gets a four star on Goodreads, I usually give them a five on Amazon because of the difference in the grading scale. This helps soothe my writer’s heart, supporting friends and co-workers. The write-up portion of the review is cut and pasted between the two review sites, therefore same review shows up on both, just star level are different. Oh, and Goodreads allows spoilers to be hid but Amazon does not – I sometimes need to work around that.

The Goodread scale for me is as follows:

One Star – Total fail, should not exist. Hated it, usually unable to finish. (One or more of these reasons.)
Two Star – Serious structural problems to the story. A “trunk” story where the author is learning how to write, but should have never been published in its present form. Did not like book. Able to finish reading the book, but frequently thought about quitting.

(Stars One and Two often inspire Editing Rants and Writing Exercises.)

Three Star – Readable. Some flaws. Bland. Nothing stands out. Liked book.
Four Star – Good book. Solid. Really liked it.
Five Star – Loved story – which I have discovered means incredible worldbuilding is involved.

(Stars Four and Five often end up in Author Spotlights and Book Review posts the following year.)

How did my 2017 reading split up?

Five Star – 11
Four Star – 42
Three Star – 28
Two Star – 12
One Star – 7

The disbursement may seem top-heavy, but remember many of these books are edited by publishing companies and many self-published people use editors as well which will reduce the pure clunkers. People want to publish books to make money, therefore most books overall will be better than mediocre.

I think the split between stars is a good disbursement. I’m not afraid to call a spade a spade.

WRITING EXERCISE: Go to your recently finished reading pile and pull out three books. Write a review for each of them figuring out what you liked about them and what you didn’t and post them to an appropriate review site. Of the three books, which book stood out the most and for what particular reason. What book received the lowest score and why? Looking at your present work-in-progress, can you apply any of the lessons you learned from these review-critiques to your own story?

***

The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi (published by Tor) – 5 Stars – Why I loved it the most: Worldbuilding. New thing learned: working with a multiple person POV allows unlikable as well as likable main characters, adding interest to the story.

Mind of My Mind by Octavia E. Butler (published by Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy) – 4 Stars – Nothing stood out.

Villains Rule by M.K. Gibson (published by Amber Cove Publishing) – 2 Stars – This humorous satire is exactly what I expect from humorous satire. Unfortunately going for the easy joke can be very misogynistic (The Pop Culture Detective Agency covers this well in “The Adorkable Misogyny of the Big Bang Theory”.) New thing learned: This story is very Meta about breaking down the Fantasy tropes and helped me be aware of a few.

Taking the thing I learned: I write likable characters. Maybe I should try for some unlikable ones. All three of these books have at least one of the point of view characters be a unrepentant villain. Something to think about.

If you would like to see all my book reviews on Goodreads, you can follow the book review links above and follow me there.

Geeking Science: Inspiration

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of Nasa: Jeanette Epps

The most valuable commodity in the world is human intellect. We can’t dig it up, refine it, and put it on the market in a quick just-in-time product stream. Intellect, in all its forms, requires discovery, shaping, honing, and continued usage. Whether a person excels in spacial, verbal, social, political, mathematical, educational, technological, or musical aspects of understanding the world, each individual must be given a safe, welcoming environment to sharpen the intellect to its fullest. Doing otherwise is burning scare resources and delaying advancement.

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) has been throwing away millions of IQ points a year with their neglect, nay, their criminal abuse of women, especially women of color. In a field where “nerdy geeks” rule, women have been kicked out of the treehouse. Half of humanity actively discouraged from participation, and people wonder why we don’t have flying cars and we aren’t living on Mars?

July 2017 released study created from interviewing 474 astronomers and planetary scientist revealed Doctorate level women scared to attend conferences or participate in field research. Let me repeat that – women our society has trained to be the best, invested over 20 years of education, because of PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE cannot attend intellectual exchanges or go to isolated locations with their co-workers because they fear for their physical and mental health. Really, WTF? (See “Women of Color Face a Staggering Amount of Harassment in Astronomy“)

Last year #MeToo had a month of buzz on Facebook and social media as woman after woman spoke about her personal experiences. I include some of my experiences along that line in “Blog: Made Me Look“. Shortly after the month of #MeToo, the celebrity circle suffered a “witch hunt” (as some called it) of improper sexual behavior accusations. Most women I know just blinked and muttered “about time.” The long-standing joke of “sleeping on the casting bed” had its covers pulled back.

Sexual harassment costs society brains, women who choose not to go into fields where only men live. Women cautiously refusing life in the military, avoiding writing because of backlash, staying home from conferences instead of sharing papers.

Maybe a part of your brain is whispering “good”, maybe another part of you has cancer which a woman who could have discovered a life-saving cure in your lifetime never entered the field after threats were made in her pre-med classes. 

Yes, someone is likely to figure it out. After all, science is just a study of the world and discovering how it works. Eventually a solution can be found. Depending on how many people are looking, “eventually” can be minutes or decades away. 

Pushing half the people out of the STEM treehouse is beyond stupid. 

A quick perspective of how making the scientific community hostile to women and people of color affect research: ORCID – A non-profit research organization with 1 million registered scientists is 33% women. The number of women in the organization would need to MORE THAN DOUBLE to achieve parity of gender.**

You can’t get those numbers overnight.

Not even in astronomy.

So how do we help those that can’t help themselves? Provide inspiration.

People emulate what they see in fiction. Having Uhura on the Enterprise bridge inspired hundreds, thousands of people – women and people of color.

Writers can provide a face for people to see in fields they never thought to try. Make people question how the world should work. Point them in a direction.

WRITING EXERCISE:  Write a STEM flash with a woman of color as a positive protagonist. Be sure she has the strongest agency in the story and not a front for a different member of the cast.

READING EXERCISE: Find a biography or autobiography of a woman or person of color who had been in space and read it.

Wikipedia has the following astronaut lists

Women: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_astronauts (include US, Soviet, Chinese, Korea, Italy, India, and more)

African-American: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African-American_astronauts

Asian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Asian_astronauts

Hispanics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hispanic_astronauts

And you can go here to find the Arab, Jewish, and Muslim lists as well as by country splits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_astronauts

***

** Statistics calculation – 33 doubled is 66. Divide 66 by 100+33 (66/133) and you only got 49%. 

Other Cool Blogs: Magical Words May 23, 2014

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Mind the Gap

Magical Words continues to give in the new year, despite being shut down, as I review the website again and again for advice. This one is from Jodi McIsaac, “Three Tools for Plotting Success“.

  1. Don’t get stuck on the Hero’s Journey
  2. Mind the gap
  3. Twenty bad ideas.

To me, “Mind the Gap” spoke the loudest. It defines reversal of expectation driving a plot, creating surprise and freshness, better than any other writing advice I have read. And “Twenty Bad Ideas” seems like a really good way to avoid common trope pitfalls.

Want to figure out which of the three makes the most impact for you? Go here: http://www.magicalwords.net/specialgueststars/a-return-visit-with-jodi-mcisaac-three-tools-for-plotting-success/

WRITING EXERCISE: Look over your present work-in-progress for a Gap and a scene without a Gap. Which scene is stronger? Which one keeps the pages turning? Can the scene without the Gap have a Gap added?

***

In my flash, The Bleue Toscano Eggs of Power, the supervillain Viper arrives thinking to attack a building. Instead he ends up working on surviving an explosion and escaping the superhero Power Fists. The second scene has him calmly accepting an item, and soon discovers he is out-of-his-depth in the technological world. In both cases his goals changed considerably. 

Writing Exercise: Real Life Inspiration

Erin Penn

Widely used piece of stock art from the internet (found 12 uses and no attribution)

“Where do you get your ideas?” FAQ #1 of writers. 

Everywhere. Reading books, the watching the news, walking down the street, head voices which won’t shut up, Facebook …

The challenge is turning a real-life event into a fictional piece. Real-life isn’t neat. There is no defined beginning, middle, and end, no inciting event, rising action, and resolution. At least not in a neat narrative package, bow-tied with theme and meaning.

WRITING EXERCISE: The writing challenge for today is to convert a real-life event, NOT YOURS, into a fictional story. Scroll through your Facebook or other social media feed. (Not on social media? Look at today’s news.) Choose a small event, not a life changing one like cancer or marriage, but more like “ate at my favorite restaurant and got the rude waiter” or “stuck in traffic waiting for the geese to cross the road”. Create a flash of at least 200 words.

***

At some point I need to write “The Help”. The basis for this eventual flash came from a sibling’s post. The weekend had been bad with everyone a bit sick, but only for one day. Dad got to return to work; mom, who is nursing, stayed home with the toddler and baby. Three days later the post comes 

“Nothing like an intermittently vomiting toddler to keep you on your toes.
It also keeps you trapped in the house. Plans cancelled, again.

I guess I’ve got plenty to time to research new washing machines, since ours just broke.”

After a flash of sympathy, I have to admit, I laughed a little at the wrench life threw into the works. Cleaning up vomit and no washing machine is a bad combo. I need to write something about that. Scrolling through the comments I discovered the poor toddler had vomited seven times that day. The broken washing machine left an inch of water in the laundry room. Sibling was having a very bad – but fiction-worthy – day.

I have a fictional couple, Joe and Cheryl, with a toddler and baby. These two are not based on my sibling and sib’s spouse – I started writing the Joe-Cheryl show (as I call it in my head) four years ago, long before my sibling had a toddler and a nursing baby. I often used them, Joe & Cheryl, to recreate real-life occurrences I have seen when working taxes at Walmart; “It’s Dirty” is exactly what a toddler said during checkout walking away from money on the floor, leaving a flabbergasted mother behind.

The challenge is the Joe-Cheryl show has certain rules in my head (1) loving couple and functional family unit, (2) must be humorous, and most importantly (3) deals a verbal play, some aspect of language or interpretation based on words: “Inside voice“, “Memory of a Lifetime“, and “Eat Half” are just some of the examples.

Making a sick kid, broken washer, and flooded laundry room smile-worthy would take a bit of doing but possible. My problem is none of those are verbal plays. Then I remember a meme about a guy explaining how he is not “helping his wife”. Perfect!

Smash all this together in my head: the meme, Joe-Cheryl and their rules, and my sibling’s very bad-but-we-will-laugh-about-it-when-it’s-over day. Oh, and this past weekend I was at a function with a teething babe-in-arms. The mother had to carry-jiggle the baby all day. Yeah, need to add that. Torture my characters like a good writer. (Even comic relief characters can be tortured.)

From four different things, “The Help” emerges.  (someday)

“Where do you get your ideas?” Everywhere.