Category: Writing Exercise

Writing Exercise: Ticking Clock

Erin Penn

Parkour Silhouette against Sky

Image copied from Learn About Parkour:

Ticking Clock

You may be familiar with “ticking clocks” from the thriller genre, but they also occur in other genre. A few things to remember with Ticking Clocks:

1. Be precise about the passage of time.
NOT GOOD: “When we talked earlier today” ; “The other day”
GOOD: “When we talked before lunch in second period” ; “The day before yesterday”

The passage of time needs to feel important to everyone. If the clock is ticking off hours, be precise about the hours – if ticking off days, be precise at the day level.

2. Don’t slow down. As the deadline approaches increase the challenges. Torture your characters.

3. Remind your readers of the Ticking Clock through the urgency the main character feels, not reminding the reader by relaying the countdown through the prose.
NOT GOOD: Douglas tore down the sidewalks because he only had moments to meet his true love, according to the street soothsayer.
GOOD: The soothsayer told him he needed to be at the corner of Second and Main at 5:08 sharp. Douglas’ breath burned in his lungs as he ran. He never was good at running, but to meet true love he would arrive gasping.

WRITING EXERCISE: Write a Ticking Clock – At least three sentences and share below. Make us feel the urgency.

Make us feel like we are back in school taking a final of 150 multiple choices in one hour … urgent … and realize the last question is an essay and we have 10 minutes left …. building, racing toward the end, getting more difficult …Then realize that the essay is 25% of the grade. I did mention torturing the characters, right?

*****

Ticking Clock

Douglas rounded the corner to Main, plowing through the professionals pouring out of the Maddox building. He was going to make it; only one city block left and it was a short side.

The bright orange cones would not have stopped him, but the caution tape was at ankle, waist, and eye level. They were repairing the sidewalk and directing foot traffic across the street. He didn’t have time.

His eyes darted for a way as his feet continued to move.

Subway, had two exits, one on Third and the other on Second.

He half-jumped the steps and half-slid the rails down; more a control fall than anything else. God, who would have thought he would be doing parkour? He forgot to breathe during the distance across tiles between the staircases. He gasp a new breath as he faced the second set of stairs, trying to ignore the digital clock above letting the commuters know it was 5:07. He had failed at everything he had ever tried unless it was a total deadend, like his job at the coffee shop.

True love was seconds away, if he made it up the three flights of stairs.

(words 42 +195 = 237 – first published 7/11/2015; republished in new blog format 11/22/2016)

Editing Rant: Copper Pennies

Erin Penn

Fingers Holding A Penny Stock Photo

Image Courtesy of Gualberto107 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What do your characters know?

So last editing rant I went off about Know Your Topic. You don’t want to lose readers because you presented parasailing or embroidery incorrectly. If you don’t know the topic find someone who does: topic experts, beta readers, at least a research librarian whom you are keeping in chocolates and coffee.

Equally important be aware of what you character knows.

This isn’t limited to the more common Point of View (POV) main character (MC) limitations; you may know character B dyed her hair yesterday, but MC doesn’t know yet so describes character B as a blonde. Don’t get me wrong, as an author making certain you only let your MC work from the information known to them rather than to you as the writer is essential. And challenging.

But you also need to limit them on what they are familiar with. Having a twenty-fourth century engineer know how to use a twentieth century keyboard to input information into a computer system is improbable.

Or a twenty-something person forty years after the zombie Apocalypse comparing the scent of blood to new pennies. Yes, this is a common comparison to the point of being clique. But someone born after coins stopped being minted isn’t likely to know what new pennies smelled like.

A person who has never seen the shore would not understand what the salty breeze meant.

Someone who had never been off a spaceship isn’t only going to be shocked by no sky – no walls is as big an issue. And the ship isn’t breathing. Could they even sleep at night? No mechanical noise means “we are all about to die”. How long does it take for the panic to wear off?

Back to the Smell of Blood – as an editor I couldn’t rewrite the line about new pennies. But I did find an article on the scent of blood. If you are describing lycanthropes, vampires, or just have splashes of blood throughout your manuscript you may want to follow the link to Writeworld – “Describing the Smell of Blood”. (AMENDMENT  on 10/24/2019 (original post 11/8/2016) – The link for the Writeworld article  is now dead. Search on “describing the smell of blood”, there are a lot of resources now.)

(sigh) … And it is research like this that puts writers on watch lists.

WRITING EXERCISE: Create a scene (500 words or less) where your WIP character describes a common day item on your desk s/he is not familiar with and what the actions are taken to discover its use.

Other Cool Blogs: Magical Words June 25, 2012

Erin Penn

Eraser On Pencil Stock Art

Image courtesy of DigitalArt at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Helpful Advice in Editing

If everything is going as I hope it will (I am writing this in June), I am elbows deep in NaNo again. I wanted all the blog postings prepped so I can concentrate on writing, therefore I went through the Magical Words archives. There I ran across Carrie Ryan’s obscurely titled post “Not that … but that”.

It’s on editing. The very thing I am trying really hard not to do. It’s a NaNo no-no during November…and my biggest weakness to meet the word counts.

When editing others, I’ve made a lot of tough calls. Should I provide another possible word or just tell the author to find a new word? Do I say information seems to be missing or do specifically state what I want added? If there is a hole, do I point out the hole (example: primary love interest is passive) or provide the author the shovel to fix the hole (example: add another love interest to fight)? In one case, I may be stepping on the author’s voice and creativity, and, in the other case, I work with a lot of new authors who are having enough headaches being edited I find giving vague solutions is more of a problem than a help. Should I provide both then – but editing is always on a tight schedule, most of the time I can only write one line and move on.

I love the “a-ha” moment Ms. Ryan shares on her first editing feedback. The editor tells her to add something which ended up sounding really strange to her, until she asked the editor “What problem does <making this change> fix?” Once she knew what the problem was, she was able to fix the issue her own way.

If you attend critique groups as a participant, receive editing feedback, or review beta reads, (as reader, editor, or writer) I highly recommend this blog. Again the link is here: http://www.magicalwords.net/carrie-ryan/not-that-but-that/

Second takeaway from the blog – don’t be afraid to ask for clarification. Stand up for yourself. That is not to say fight your editor, but remember to be a participant in the partnership to make your book better.

And if you are participating in NaNo – good luck!

WRITING EXERCISE: Specifically approach someone you trust to be honest and ask them to beta read, critique, or edit something you wrote (at least 500 words and no more than 3,000), letting them know you are using this for practice of the editing process. After taking a day or two to look over their responses and get over the grief stage (see blog here on critique grief), practice asking for clarification without confrontation. Once completing the clarification portion, ask for feedback from your reviewer on how you did.

READING EXERCISE: Read a short story and write a critique or edit the story. Set it aside for two days. Come back and now pretend to be the author. Where do you think the author would like clarification on your critique.

Other Cool Blogs: io9 March 23, 2016

Erin Penn

Buffy and Giles in the Library

Image acquired from the internet hive mind

With Halloween just around the corner, I thought I would share a little storytelling lesson I found on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Published March 23, 2016 by Charlie Jane Anders on io9, the posting is entitled “10 Vital Storytelling Lessons I Learned from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

Sometimes stuff like this is little more than a walk down memory lane, and since Buffy isn’t a bad memory I decided to read through. My goodness! This is actually great stuff.

Lesson One: You can be scary, fun, AND sad. … How true and how difficult. Some episodes we laughed, jumped, and cried our eyes out. Most times when writing I managed one, and if I am lucky two. Ms. Anders is right on point saying to pull off this emotional roller-coaster, everything comes back to characters.

Lesson Two: Takeaway quote “it’s totally fine to have the apocalypse going on in the background, while instead focusing on a smaller, more personal struggle in the foreground.”

Ready for that link now? http://io9.gizmodo.com/10-vital-storytelling-lessons-i-learned-from-buffy-the-1766651082

WRITING EXERCISE: Think about an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Why has it stuck with you? What significant character activities appealed to you? Was it scary, fun, or sad? Write at least 100 words on the subject. … Now rewatch the episode if you can find it and take it apart based on characters, goals, and stakes. Be sure to include the villains, the Scooby Crew, and secondary characters who appear in more than one episode.

For those who did not watch Buffy, use Dexter, Supernatural, Twin Peaks, or other show you like and does scary, funny, and sad.

 

Writing Exercise: POV and Figures of Speech

Erin Penn

Long Tail Boat Stock Photo

Image Courtesy of 9comeback at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

POV and Figures of Speech

Figures of speech, the descriptive picture using words, can help define the main character of the story, not only through describing him but the word used in the narrative. How they view the world and their personal experiences will impact what and how they share information with the reader. Limiting the story to the POV character’s vocabulary can expand the book’s world-view, drawing the reader deeper into the story and the main character’s mindset.

For example, a solider may describe the boat he is on as “clashing with the waves”, while the terse farmer from steering would say “the ship plowed through the sea,” and the verbose seamstress describes “the vessel cutting through the white crests, like scissors through crinoline, not well, but with determination.”

WRITING EXERCISE: Today’s challenge – take a single action – ship on the sea, fist punching the gut, a man limping across the room, a woman smiling welcome, etc – and then have three different people describe it from their point of view in a single sentence. You should end up with three sentences. Possible protagonists include a teacher, a wizard, a criminal, a space ship engineer, a (highly intelligent) toddler, or any of the people used in my three examples.

I am rather proud of my flash, With Moon Watching Other Places, The main character is a dryad and I describe many items in relation to the natural world. Breaking from the standard human viewpoint was refreshing and challenging.

Please post your comments below.

(first publication 3/12/2015; republished in new blog format 10/25/2016)