Anybody can learn to write under deadline and become a better writer for the effort. If you're a working journalist, you already understand that. But if you're not, well, you might just have to be shown how writing under deadline can improve both the quality and the quantity of your literary output.
Try this short, three-part exercise, one part at a time:
1.) Animal Description. Write a very simple descriptive piece about the favorite pet of someone you know and admire. It might be your parents' house cat or your uncle's horse, your brother's dog or your neighbor's ferret.
Set an alarm to go off after 15 minutes, then start writing. Remember, whether you use pen and paper or fingers and keyboard, don't dawdle! Even if nothing comes to you at first, you can begin by writing down single descriptive words that apply to your subject, such as "intelligent," "cute," "playful," etc. You can always come back when your mind is ready and string the words into some sentences (and the sentences into some paragraphs).
When the 15 minutes are up, stop for a moment to re-set the alarm for another 5 minutes, then return to your writing. Remember, you have only 5 minutes to wrap up your description! Imagine that your editor is sitting at the next desk, watching the clock and anxiously tapping his foot. And he pays the bills!
When a total of 20 minutes has elapsed, stop writing. Take a look at what you've written. Whether it's 20 words or two thousand, they're your words, and the descriptive passage is your passage.
2.) Personal Description. Now put that writing aside and set the alarm for another 15 minutes. You're going to repeat the exercise, this time writing about the person who owns the pet or animal. Once again, you might need to start with single words ... or, since your creative juices are already flowing, you might find yourself slipping right into your new exercise without skipping a beat.
As before, when the 15 minutes have sounded, give yourself another 5 minutes to wrap up the piece. At the end of the 20 minutes, your deadline is up, so stop writing.
3.) Most Frightening Experience. Now, one last assignment: think about the most frightening thing that ever happened to you. It might have been a nightmare or some psychological trauma, or it may have been a brush with physical danger. Now describe the incident as though it happened to the subject of your second writing exercise (above) and not to you. Make sure you work the pet into the frightening sequence somehow. What you want to end up with, after this final 20-minute session, is a piece talking about your main character, his favorite pet or animal, and the frightening experience that somehow affected them both.
Now take a look at all three pieces and congratulate yourself. What you've written, in the very short period of one hour, is a short story, consisting of two characters (one human and one slightly less so) and the frightening conflict and resolution they went through together.
Yes, you'll need to take a little more time to flesh things out, blend them together so that it reads as smoothly as a breeze across a silky sow's ear. But how nice the feeling to have done something so creative in such a short period of time--realizing forever the value to your creative literary output, all from writing ... under deadline.
Showing posts with label Exercise. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Exercise. Show all posts
Monday, November 5, 2007
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Exercise: Outlining, Getting Down to Business
Outlining, is the key to literary success. But how do you learn to outline? For some people (of course!), it comes naturally. For others, it's a bear.
Here's one way to brush up on your outlining skills.
Take a five-to-ten-page piece of literature. It can be something you wrote or something you like (a magazine article, a short story, a segment of a novel). Then outline in reverse. In other words, start with the finished product and create the outline from that. Although the premise is not quite the same as starting with an outline and ending with the finished product, the techniques of outlining are identical--reducing a story to its most basic terms.
Take the story of The Three Little Pigs, for example. It breaks down quite comfortably into five sections. The first we'll call the introduction. The second is the pig that built his house of straw. The third is the pig that built his house of twigs. The fourth is the pig that built his house of bricks. The fifth is the conclusion.
The outline would look something like this:
Introduction
Three pigs set out to build houses to provide protection from the Big Bad Wolf.
Pig One
The first pig decided to build his house of straw. Straw was easy to come by, inexpensive, and easy to work with. In no time at all, the pig had completed his house, and he moved in before any of his brothers had finished their houses. He danced around and chided his brothers for not having had the same stroke of brilliance.
Pig Two
The second pig decided to build his house of twigs. Twigs were stronger than straw, inexpensive, and easy to work with. Twigs did take longer to build with, but, still, in little more time than his straw-building brother, he, too, had built a house and moved in.
Pig Three
The third pig decided to take more time, evaluate the situation, and react accordingly. The wolf, this pig realized, was shrewd and cunning. He was strong and resourceful. Besides that, he had a fondness for the taste of pig flesh. So this pig decided to build a house that no wolf anywhere could defeat--a house made of bricks. While the pig labored away, sweating beneath the weight of his own tenacity, his two brothers danced and frolicked and cajoled their older brother for his foolishness. Why spend so much time building a house of bricks, they argued, when he could accomplish the same feat more quickly and easily using straw or twigs?
Conslusion
When at last the third Pig had completed his house of bricks, the Big Bad Wolf made his rounds. When he arrived a the house of the first little pig, he smiled. With a huff and a puff, he blew the house in, and the pig went scurrying for his life to the house of his twig-building brother.
When the wolf succeeded in destroying the house of twigs, as well, the two little pigs scurried to the only place they knew to take refuge--the house that their brother had built with bricks. As the wolf appeared, the two foolish pigs trembled behind the closed door, fearing that the brick house, too, would be blown away.
But the wolf, try as he might, failed to damage the house made of bricks and, in complete exhaustion, finally gave up and wandered away, never to be seen again.
"You see," said the brother who had built his house of bricks. "Sometimes, the quickest and easiest way is not the best."
Naturally, this is an oversimplification of an age-old tale reduced to its main elements. But it serves a point about outlining: Include the story line (plot) and any critical dialogue (very little) and some of the personalities of the characters (the pigs) so that you can go back later and flesh in the details.
The results? Well, hey, if you'd written the story of the three little pigs, you'd have Walt Disney Studios knocking on your door right now! Get the picture?
Here's one way to brush up on your outlining skills.
Take a five-to-ten-page piece of literature. It can be something you wrote or something you like (a magazine article, a short story, a segment of a novel). Then outline in reverse. In other words, start with the finished product and create the outline from that. Although the premise is not quite the same as starting with an outline and ending with the finished product, the techniques of outlining are identical--reducing a story to its most basic terms.
Take the story of The Three Little Pigs, for example. It breaks down quite comfortably into five sections. The first we'll call the introduction. The second is the pig that built his house of straw. The third is the pig that built his house of twigs. The fourth is the pig that built his house of bricks. The fifth is the conclusion.
The outline would look something like this:
Introduction
Three pigs set out to build houses to provide protection from the Big Bad Wolf.
Pig One
The first pig decided to build his house of straw. Straw was easy to come by, inexpensive, and easy to work with. In no time at all, the pig had completed his house, and he moved in before any of his brothers had finished their houses. He danced around and chided his brothers for not having had the same stroke of brilliance.
Pig Two
The second pig decided to build his house of twigs. Twigs were stronger than straw, inexpensive, and easy to work with. Twigs did take longer to build with, but, still, in little more time than his straw-building brother, he, too, had built a house and moved in.
Pig Three
The third pig decided to take more time, evaluate the situation, and react accordingly. The wolf, this pig realized, was shrewd and cunning. He was strong and resourceful. Besides that, he had a fondness for the taste of pig flesh. So this pig decided to build a house that no wolf anywhere could defeat--a house made of bricks. While the pig labored away, sweating beneath the weight of his own tenacity, his two brothers danced and frolicked and cajoled their older brother for his foolishness. Why spend so much time building a house of bricks, they argued, when he could accomplish the same feat more quickly and easily using straw or twigs?
Conslusion
When at last the third Pig had completed his house of bricks, the Big Bad Wolf made his rounds. When he arrived a the house of the first little pig, he smiled. With a huff and a puff, he blew the house in, and the pig went scurrying for his life to the house of his twig-building brother.
When the wolf succeeded in destroying the house of twigs, as well, the two little pigs scurried to the only place they knew to take refuge--the house that their brother had built with bricks. As the wolf appeared, the two foolish pigs trembled behind the closed door, fearing that the brick house, too, would be blown away.
But the wolf, try as he might, failed to damage the house made of bricks and, in complete exhaustion, finally gave up and wandered away, never to be seen again.
"You see," said the brother who had built his house of bricks. "Sometimes, the quickest and easiest way is not the best."
Naturally, this is an oversimplification of an age-old tale reduced to its main elements. But it serves a point about outlining: Include the story line (plot) and any critical dialogue (very little) and some of the personalities of the characters (the pigs) so that you can go back later and flesh in the details.
The results? Well, hey, if you'd written the story of the three little pigs, you'd have Walt Disney Studios knocking on your door right now! Get the picture?
Exercise: Perchance To Dream
One of the freest forms of storytelling takes place not between two friends or a couple of snuggling lovers. It takes place within our own minds. It is our psyche relaying a tale to us. We call it a dream.
Recall for an instance a dream you have had--any dream, ever. If you're like most people, you found that the dream was rich in imagery, sometimes in color, that the dialogue, if any, was sharp and to the point, free-flowing, unstilted. The imagery was fantastic, often including flying stairs and headless children who suddenly sprout eyes and mouths and ears when it is convenient in the dream for them to have them. In short, the way our dreams unfold is natural, realistic, and believable because, within them, we suspend the constraints of reality.
Imagine what it would be like if you could write so wonderfully freely. Imagine if you could create a world unfettered by conventions. Not only would your story lines, your plots, be wild and free, but your characters would be believable and really, really, real. Their dialogue would wound unstilted. Their relationships would be as natural and unquestioned as the figurines in your nocturnal fantasies. Imagine if you could write like that.
What's that you say? You're not into fantasy writing? You want to write the great American tragedy or the last lasting literary tome of the new millennium? Yes, but if you could incorporate into your writing the same wild freeness that takes place in your dreams, the same believability, even a book solidly based on reality could sing!
Think about this sentence: "Donnie was so angry, he wanted to kill him."
Now think about Donnie, his image, what he looks like, how he's dressed, how he smells, looks, moves, sounds. Think about his quirks, his shortcomings, what sets him off, moves him apart. Those are all the things you would experience if you had a dream about a Donnie who was so angry that he wanted to kill someone. If you could relay some of those dream images, you could capture the scene and start a book that or a short story that just might be a new classic.
Of course, one way to learn to write in such a way--a way similar to that in which we dream--is to write out your dreams. But we only dream so much and often remember so little. Besides, there is a better way.
Write out a dream image. Not one that you have actually experience, but one that you are making up. You are the dream factory. Now, doctor, create the dream.
As you do so, remember a couple of points.
1.) Start your dream image anywhere. As in a dream, you don't need a beginning, a middle, and an end. Sometimes thinking in linear terms stifles our creativity. By picking up with an image and then letting the story unfold, we loosen our creative bindings.
2.) Place no restrictions on your image or characters. Just as the human mind doesn't limit what it conjures up during that beautiful REM time, you, too, should let yourself go. Flying donkeys? Talking birds? Hey, it's your dream.
3.) Include all the senses. Don't tell us something smells beautiful, describe it. Your mind doesn't explain that something smells beautiful in a dream, why do so in your real-time writing? Do the same with the other senses--describe the site, the feel, the sound the way it's unfolding in your dream image.
Follow that advice, and you'll be amazed at just how creative you really are ... and how unnecessary it is to rely on those old stand-by literary conventions to get your image across.
Recall for an instance a dream you have had--any dream, ever. If you're like most people, you found that the dream was rich in imagery, sometimes in color, that the dialogue, if any, was sharp and to the point, free-flowing, unstilted. The imagery was fantastic, often including flying stairs and headless children who suddenly sprout eyes and mouths and ears when it is convenient in the dream for them to have them. In short, the way our dreams unfold is natural, realistic, and believable because, within them, we suspend the constraints of reality.
Imagine what it would be like if you could write so wonderfully freely. Imagine if you could create a world unfettered by conventions. Not only would your story lines, your plots, be wild and free, but your characters would be believable and really, really, real. Their dialogue would wound unstilted. Their relationships would be as natural and unquestioned as the figurines in your nocturnal fantasies. Imagine if you could write like that.
What's that you say? You're not into fantasy writing? You want to write the great American tragedy or the last lasting literary tome of the new millennium? Yes, but if you could incorporate into your writing the same wild freeness that takes place in your dreams, the same believability, even a book solidly based on reality could sing!
Think about this sentence: "Donnie was so angry, he wanted to kill him."
Now think about Donnie, his image, what he looks like, how he's dressed, how he smells, looks, moves, sounds. Think about his quirks, his shortcomings, what sets him off, moves him apart. Those are all the things you would experience if you had a dream about a Donnie who was so angry that he wanted to kill someone. If you could relay some of those dream images, you could capture the scene and start a book that or a short story that just might be a new classic.
Of course, one way to learn to write in such a way--a way similar to that in which we dream--is to write out your dreams. But we only dream so much and often remember so little. Besides, there is a better way.
Write out a dream image. Not one that you have actually experience, but one that you are making up. You are the dream factory. Now, doctor, create the dream.
As you do so, remember a couple of points.
1.) Start your dream image anywhere. As in a dream, you don't need a beginning, a middle, and an end. Sometimes thinking in linear terms stifles our creativity. By picking up with an image and then letting the story unfold, we loosen our creative bindings.
2.) Place no restrictions on your image or characters. Just as the human mind doesn't limit what it conjures up during that beautiful REM time, you, too, should let yourself go. Flying donkeys? Talking birds? Hey, it's your dream.
3.) Include all the senses. Don't tell us something smells beautiful, describe it. Your mind doesn't explain that something smells beautiful in a dream, why do so in your real-time writing? Do the same with the other senses--describe the site, the feel, the sound the way it's unfolding in your dream image.
Follow that advice, and you'll be amazed at just how creative you really are ... and how unnecessary it is to rely on those old stand-by literary conventions to get your image across.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)