Exercise for the day, July 28: Duos, trios, and ensembles

More on characters and their relationships.


How many characters are at the center of your story? Two, three, more? Just for fun, scan these lists and see if your characters fit, even loosely, with any of these tropes. What ideas can you pick up about the ways in which they're different, play off one another, bump up against one another?

Duo tropes

Power trios

Ensembles

Exercise for the day, July 27: Take a bad scene . . .

A revision exercise:

Find a "bad" scene. Something you're struggling with, that just isn't working right.

Answer the questions below:

-What is your character's motivation in this scene? (Pick one central character to answer for.)

-What specific goal goes along with this motivation? For example, if your character is motivated by a desire to forget a failed love affair, the specific goal might be to get drunk.

-Why does this matter? What happens if they don't achieve their goal?

-What changes for your character between the first sentence of this scene, and the last sentence?

-State this in your character's voice. E.g. "I'd gone into the meeting looking for a solution to one problem; but by the time I came out I had a new problem, and this one was a whole lot bigger."

I'll bet you've learned at least one new thing about your scene by doing this . . . now go rewrite!

Exercise for the day, July 26: Witness

The poem of witness is the eye of knowledge:
to understand it, gaze into your heart and mind.

Without the song of testimony,
the quarrels of this world don’t end.

—Kabir



Set the timer for fifteen minutes. (If you can't do that, do ten, or even five.)

Ask one of your characters: What is something you witnessed, that matters? Tell me about it.

You're not going for "good" writing, but for the most honest answer possible from your character. It's okay if it's halting or fragmentary.

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Exercise for the day, 7/25: Humans working at cross purposes

Plot is people. Human emotions and desires founded on the realities of life, working at cross purposes, getting hotter and fiercer as they strike against each other until finally there’s an explosion—that’s Plot.

—Leigh Brackett


Purpose: To bring your attention to the ways in which your characters are different from one another and have different desires, and to think about how that informs their actions.

-Who are the main characters in your story? Are there two, three, more? Spend ten minutes answering the Proust Questionnaire for each one. What new angle does this give you on how they might behave, as you sit down with your next scene?

Hourlong Private Consults in return for donations to RAICES Texas

I've been getting a lot of interest but no offers so I've added STARTING BIDS-- please see below

I'm teaming up with the Hudson Valley Writers' Center to offer two hourlong private fiction-writing consults in their beautiful space in Sleepy Hollow, NY, in return for donations to RAICES Texas.

On July 24, RAICES tweeted: “Children are still in cages. Parents still don’t know where their children are. Some were coerced illegally into leaving the country. The media isn’t writing as many stories but the problem has not gone away.”

For one of the hours I'll take the highest offer
STARTING BID $25

I'd like to give the other to someone working to fight xenophobia and bigotry, either in your life or in your writing or both (including being a writer from a community that could use more representation)
STARTING BID $5


I'll be taking offers until August 3. Use the "CONTACT ME" form to get in touch.

About me

What can you do with this consult?

-Tell me about a novel or story you've always wished you could write and what's stood in your way, and we'll talk about how to get started and make a plan (if you decide you really want to!).

-Tell me about the novel or story you're working on and where you're challenged.

-Note: It's optional to bring pages of writing. I suggest bringing only a couple, or a longer piece with a scene or two highlighted. If you want me to read more before we get together let's discuss.

-Tell me about your novel that stalled years ago, and work out a plan for what to do next.

-Talk about anything writing-related at all—it's 100% your time!

Exercise for the day, July 24: Problem + Character

Problem + Character: Ten Minutes

What we did in class yesterday.

Most exercises I give can be directly related to the project you're working on. This one asks you to step away from it for ten minutes and mess around with something else. It can be helpful to remember what it feels like to write without all the baggage and worry of your current story; to feel the stakes are low and you can just play, and it doesn't matter whether it's "good" or "bad."

Get a RANDOM NUMBER between 1 and 24

This is your CHARACTER

Get ANOTHER NUMBER

This is their PROBLEM

Get another NUMBER

This WORD OR PHRASE will be in your first sentence

Set the timer for ten minutes.

Write. Don't stop. Even if you're literally typing, "Blah blah blah, I don't know what to say," keep going until the timer goes off.

Exercise of the day: July 23 — Proust Questionnaire

Character Exercise: Proust Questionnaire


You may be familiar with the Proust Questionnaire from Vanity Fair magazine, which uses it to interview celebrities. It has its origins in late-19th and early-twentieth-century British querist's albums and books of drawing room confessions, conversation-starting guest books you'd keep in the parlor. Marcel Proust's version has remained popular.

There are many character-building exercises that ask you to imagine details about your character's life: her childhood, her morning commute,  her favorite breakfast, etc. I like this one because it's detailed enough to bring up interesting things you may not have asked your character about before, but sticks to questions that are pithy and revealing.

It's especially interesting to do this with your main character. It's interesting how we can live with someone day after day and assume we know them  well . . . and yet there's often much we don't know. (This goes for real people and fictional characters.)

-  THE PROUST QUESTIONNAIRE  -

There are a few ways to use this.

-Answer for your main character

-Answer for any character you want to understand

-Answer for two or more to see their differences (really interesting)

-Answer for yourself, and then your main character, to explore the ways in which your main character is not you (also very interesting)

-If you don't want your writing time to be hijacked by this, set the timer for fifteen minutes and answer as many questions as you can in that time

Querist's albums in a British catalogue, 1906

Exercise of the day: July 22

I'm going to post daily writing exercises for a few weeks. This is partly just a way for me to catalogue all my exercises and have them in one searchable place. 

I teach fiction writing privately, at the Hudson Valley Writers' Center, and at the Yale Writers' Workshop, and I usually have a few classes plus one-on-one work going on all at once. Different challenges and issues (including my own) inspire me to come up with exercises, and I find I'm generating a handful every week and then often losing them. 

By collecting them here I can record them all and, most important, offer them for free to anyone who might find them useful! 

Please feel free to use on your own or in your teaching, with credit to original author. (Sometimes that's me, sometimes I'll pass along someone else's exercise and credit them.)

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Character Exercise: Duos

Sent this out recently to one of my classes. 

Do you have a couple of characters who fit (even loosely) into one of these tropes? 

Duo Tropes

Scan the list and see if you can pick up inspiration for ways to enhance/have fun with the dynamics of your characters.

If you want a more guided assignment:

-Set the timer for 15 minutes and scan this list, with no agenda, just openness and curiosity. (If you want to read more, that's fine, but you could easily get lost here and forget to write . . . Don't do that!)

-Now set the timer for 7 minutes and brainstorm (write down every idea that pops into your head, no censoring) about the duo in your own story.

-Next time you sit down to write, note how these ideas are filtering into your story. (They will.)

(There's lots of fun stuff to explore on TVTropes.org . . . more to come.)