New Year Writing Workout #5: Shopping List

How are you feeling? Are those exercises getting your writing muscles limbered up?

Today’s exercise is odd, but fun. First things first, take a peek in your fridge and cupboards, then grab a pen and paper and write out a grocery list. If you want, you can borrow mine:

sour cream
eggs
bananas
cucumber
bread
crackers
milk

What we’re going to do is make that grocery list stand out. We’re going to make it evocative. Ready?

We’ll get ourselves started with a few themes to help us get in a ‘mood’. To make it simple for our first go around, we’ll use some of the main story genres; romance, science fiction, mystery and literary.

Let’s start with romance. Pick an adjective (or verb) for each of the items on your grocery list that shows your genre/theme. By the time you’re done your list, there should be a feel for the theme. For example, in romance you might have passionate milk or caressing sour cream, maybe some doe-eyed eggs and swooning bananas. My list is a bit silly, but it gives you an idea, particularly if you compare it against the adjectives you pick for another genre.

How would your list differ for science fiction? And mystery? Maybe you’d have screaming crackers, murdered eggs, stealth bread.

When you’re done your lists, compare them. Can you get a sense of the genre/theme or emotion you are trying to convey in each list? (Ignore the genre title.)

When you are done laughing at yourself and your list, check back with a few scenes in your manuscript and see if your adjectives and verbs are doing the work you think they should to evoke mood.

Enjoy!

New Year Writing Workout #4: Progression and Focus

Okay, I’m going to get evil today. We’re going to make your writing bones ache, but it is going to feel soooo good afterwards.

One of the biggest issues I’ve had with my writing has been progression and focus. Part of this is a result of me grabbing an idea and just going for it without much forethought or planning. Here’s an idea. Off I go. Then I find myself in edit hell for ages and ages while I try to pull it all together into one tight little package.

Then I took a class from Susan Meier last fall. It saved me! She taught me a golden little nugget that I’ll share with you here. As you write, edit or even plan your story, think of this: every scene must have at least an ‘action’, ‘reaction/consequence’ or ‘decision’. And they must flow. In other words, an action sets off a reaction which creates a decision. That decision causes a new action and onward. You may have a scene that involves one aspect, or all three, depending on the ‘size’ of what’s happening.

Here’s an example: John hits his brother in the mouth (action). His brother hits him back (reaction) and breaks his jaw, sending John to the hospital. John decides (decision) to get even with his brother. John lies to his brother about a girl the brother is dating (action). The brother has a fight with his girlfriend and they break up (reaction) and decides to leave girls aside and travel to Africa (decision).

When I wrote my latest story (during NaNoWriMo), I used Susan’s tips again. This time, as I wrote my story, I kept my handy story notebook beside me and wrote down a few words describing the scene I was writing or about to write. Naturally, I included whether it was an action, reaction or a decision. This was huge in helping me keep the story focused as well as helping me move forward when I felt stuck. And at the same time, I got to keep writing and dreaming up the story as I went, which is pretty much my favourite way to write. (I usually know the ending and some of the major plot points before I start writing though. It isn’t all totally moving forward in the dark.)

I can’t say enough for this method. For me, it was a golden nugget of wisdom. It opened that door, allowing the light of writing knowledge to shine down on me after months of struggle. So, now it is your turn to go forth and work that writing muscle. You can’t lose.

New Year Writing Workout #1: Adjectives and Adverbs

Happy New Year everyone. If your resolution (made in the wee hours of last night and fuelled by the optimism of Vodka) was to get fit this year, I can help you out. That is, of course, you mean exercising your writing muscle.

For the next few days, I’ll be posting some of my favourite writing exercises from 2008. I encourage you to take the time (Don’t cheat! Some of them can be really telling and helpful.) to try the exercises. There’s always something that can be improved, tweaked or strengthened. Sometimes, you only need your eyes opened.

Without further ado, here’s the first one (borrowed from Noah Lukeman):

1) Take your first page and remove every adjective and adverb, listing them separately.

2) Look at your first page without all these adjectives and adverbs. Does it read faster? Are your major ideas still being conveyed?

3) Look at your removed adjectives and adverbs lists. How many are boring, commonplace, cliche? Try and find a stronger replacement. (Get out the thesaurus!) If you have two or three clumped together, see if you can find one strong adjective/adverb that could replace the two or three. The idea is to aim for stronger imagery and a faster, cleaner read.

4) Try placing your replacements in your story. How does it read now?

This exercise really opened my eyes in terms of adjectives that I overused–I still find myself falling into overuse from time to time. In fact, I went and did a ‘find’ for words like ‘look’ in my ms and tried to find other ways to convey the same idea without ‘look’ or in some cases, remove the whole sentence, creating a better flow.

Good luck and see you tomorrow.

An Investment in Uncertainty

Yesterday as we were lawyering up, our lawyer said something to me that hit just the right note.

We were in setting up our Wills and I asked about digital rights and whether I should be mentioning them in my will. Of course, she became curious about what sort of digital rights I had. So I explained that I was doing some writing that was not yet published, but that at some point it might be and the copyrights may be something that should be passed on. (Her recommendation was that I incorporate at some future point and all my business things would be mentioned in my will and become part of my estate, etc, etc. Basically, she wasn’t too worried about digital rights.) Anyway, as we were leaving her office, she asked me what I had been writing. At this point, I was a touch worried. Did lawyer-client confidentiality apply when we were standing outside her office? See, the thing is that very few people know I am writing (I don’t want the pressure and can’t handle the snoopiness from people I know–silly, eh?) and we live in a small town. For example, my husband used to work with the lawyer’s mother and he obtains services from the lawyer’s father and our daughter used to go to the same babysitter as the lawyer’s kids from time to time. In fact, our daughter had a bit of a crush on her son. Small world. Gossip travels faster than light, etc, etc. So I explained simply, “novels.”

But lawyers are curious critters. She prompted me for what kinds of novels. Really, lawyers know all sorts of ways to ask  questions and have no worries about doing so in order to get the answers they want. They can get really specific and direct so all you can do is answer truthfully. Dang, my diversion techniques and generalities were not satisfying her! I could feel myself blushing–especially when my husband stepped in and informed the lawyer that I was selling myself short. He’s so sweet. I brushed it all off with a comment along the lines of it being a bit of a long shot and that it takes a lot of time and work. She looked at me and kindly said, “It’s an investment in uncertainty, isn’t it?” And it totally is.

And it sure is a wonderful one.

Free Book on Writing!

I love free things. Honestly, I’m a bit of a sucker for anything free. Plus, I love books. Sadly, I often find myself too cheap to stack up the ones I really want.

So what is better than a free book? Nothing in my mind. I used to just about fall down with happiness when my university profs would weed through their personal collection and leave a stack of free books outside their office door. Sigh. Books. Free books.

Anyway, Donald Maas, an agent and writer, is giving away his ebook version of The Career Novelist. A writing book! And it’s free! I’m so pumped! Follow the link above to download your own copy. I’ve also heard that his other books on writing such as Writing the Breakout Novel are great too. Those ones, you have to pay for, but really, I’d pay money for them if the free one helped me out–smart marketing!

Enjoy!