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  Favorite Writing Exercises

  If a writing exercise is anything that gives your writing a much-needed kick in the rear, then my favorite thing to do is fool the sluggish writing sections--you know, the sections that slow down because they're hard, not thought out enough, boring, etc.--by taking a break from the keyboard and writing  longhand for a while. Something about the pen and paper (and my horrible handwriting, I'm sure) frees me up to write crappily, but happily, through the block. Sometimes I start talking myself through the scene in the middle of a scene--what's the point, here? What's this character trying to do? And usually I emerge with an answer that works (for now). At the very least I have some stuff to type in and clean up which gets me through the sticky parts.

  Taking this one step further, I recently started writing a screenplay. Oh, I'm not a screewriter by any stretch, but I found that writing up ideas I had for a scene of some future project in screenplay form (or as close as I could get given my utter lack of screewriting experience) captured the idea much better than cryptic, and often, illegible notes on torn envelopes, napkins, and the margins of old work. Plus as a fiction writer, it's a hoot to summarize emotions (nervous). Days later, I can still conjure the scene I want to write, whereas scribbled notes had a half life of roughly three minutes.

  So I guess my writing exercise would be to play around like you know what you're doing in a form that's unfamiliar to you. Then bring the kicks you get from it back to your genre of choice. Because sometimes it's good to be reminded that we started writing as play, or at least I did.
  
  
  

  Posted 19 Jun 08 in the narrative ark