Category: Writing Exercise

Writing Exercise: B is for Bleed

Erin Penn 1 Comment

   

Photo by Alexandre Boucey on Unsplash // Art of letter B from the 2025 A-to-Z Blogging Challenge website provided to participants

Me on Facebook: “Writing is open-heart surgery on yourself.”

One of my friend’s replied: “Just open a vein and bleed on a page.”

Another one added: “If you can’t make yourself cry, you are doing something wrong.”

You know when they say “Write what you know,” they don’t mean dragons and wizards, or blasters and spaceships, or murder and police procedures. The of-so-rarely-helpful-but-always-critical-they mean emotions.

YOUR emotions.

If you aren’t hurting, the reader/listener won’t feel it.

WRITING EXERCISE: Write a conversation between two people, three at max. You know the drill, make it short – a single scene, about 100 words, no more than five hundred (this is an exercise, not a novel). See if you can capture an emotion – laughter, anger, tears, hunger, pride … try to capture the moment to the point you feel the emotions welling within you. Cut and paste it below or drop a link to where people can find it.

My attempt: Negative One is a Value (9/15/24) was never meant to be a cry-fest [I do have other stories for that like the Ymir’s Songs duology Fifteen Minutes (10/09/22) and  Song for Rosalynn (11/26/23)], but Neg-One was meant to capture an emotion … a group of emotions … a moment of emotion? Anyway, frustration, the bone-deep hurt only family can inflict, the deep caring of trying just once to get through. A flash of anger. Rage … against everything. Never, ever being good enough. When you read it, do these emotions come through?

Writing Exercise: Dear Diary, today was an adventure

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Photo 67785157 | © Konstantin Iuganov | Dreamstime.com (picture paid for)

“Dear Diary, Today was an adventure.”

I’ve never personally been much of filling journals or diaries. This blog and the vlog over on TikTok is the closest I get, and I think I miss out on something important with that. Filling a journal keeps track of the amazing things that happen in your life that all blend together over time. An adventure of going to a store you have never visited. Laughter a child shared with you. A near miss on the street. All these peculiar, wonderous, remarkable things. Or you can take the ordinary and mundane and make it extraordinary. The fight to get out of bed. Doing battle with the garden. Drinking the mystical elixir of wakefulness. Life is magic and journals and diaries give a writer a chance to capture it.

Today’s writing exercise is particular helpful if your well is dry or a writer’s block has appeared in your wording road.

WRITING EXERCISE: Create a diary entry taking an ordinary event and making it fantastical. How did you fight gravity today? Any of your drinks containing liquids from other continents? Did you use a tech today that when you really think about it, it becomes amazing (such as running water in the house)? Aim of 100-500 words for your entry. If you are in a writing slump, aim for the higher end.

Writing Exercise: Genderless

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Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

Can you write a story with no gendered pronouns? The most common substitution by authors is “them/they’re”.

I’ve been really impressed with the Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells. Her main character is never defined with gender as a mechanical being. At the book club where we talked about the book “All Systems Red”, half of us thought the main character had “he/him” pronouns and the other half used “she/her” pronouns talking about the character. I went through the first book again and discovered a complete blank and none of us had noticed while reading the books.

That is some awful good writing.

WRITING EXERCISE: Write a flash or scene where at least one of the characters’ genders is never defined.

My Attempt: The Dream of You and I (2/4/2024).

Writing Exercise: The Stars of Character Development

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Photo 127476676 | Astrology © Dwnld777 | Dreamstime.com (Paid for)

Creating unique characters to play off each other can be difficult. How do you make them sound different, act different, be different? I usually tap into the Sixteen Personality Types, but much of that is crouched in scientific mumbo-jumbo making it hard to access especially when you just want to pants a story. Struggling with the difference between Extrovert and Introvert when all you want to do is write a scene right now can take all the wind out of your sails.

What other groups of personality architypes are there that a writer can take and run with?

Astrology could be tapped to make each of your characters different. Just google a sign – the definitions provided are involved from romantic features to preferred jobs, how they are good and bad at relationships, familiar and romantic – from there you have the basics of a character. And since it isn’t a “scientific” thing, the websites are much more accessible and often give humorous examples. You can use the Western Signs like Pisces and Scorpio or the Eastern Signs like Dragons and Rabbits.

WRITING ASSIGNMENT: Pick two astrological signs and create a scene of 50 to 250 words. Comment below how it changed your character development.

My Attempt: When the Stars Align (12/24/2023) – I had named the first character Leo just at random, but as the scene went on, I decided to match characters to star signs. Some of the characters I named because they were already showing those traits (Virgo/Virga), and others had personality quirks driven by their astrology name (Sagittarius). I found it really helped make the characters be different people without much effort. In the future, if I think my characters are sounding or acting too much the same, I might tap into these architypes again as a character development tool.

Magical Words: Revisions Revisited

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Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

Time to break out the red pen again. An edit is in the door and needs some work.

One of the things I will say, many times is – “this is just a suggestion.” or “It needs fixing, here is an example so you can see how I think it is wrong, but you are the author.”

David B. Coe paraphrased his editor in the Magical Words post from November 29, 2010, “Revisiting Revisions” with:

“You don’t have to use my wording,” he said with maddening equanimity, when I complained about some change he had made to a previous manuscript. “You’re the writer; I’m sure you can come up with something better.  I changed it because the original wording didn’t work.  It wasn’t clear, or it didn’t work with the rest of the scene.  I was just trying to draw your attention to it.”

And that is the horrific thing editors do. They point out what is wrong. Maddening cruel and loving essential, every red mark.

And it isn’t always “wrong – wrong”. It could be “not as good as you are capable of”. Sometimes I think that is the worse, because wrong is an easy fix – “make better” oh boy, that is going to take some effort.

This particular Magical Words is mostly a reminder for ME on how to be the best editor possible. Sometimes ruts happen. Tired happens. And people need to be reminded of best practices. This post by Dr. Coe is full of them.

Again, the URL is: https://www.magicalwords.net/david-b-coe/revisions-revisited/