Comments on: Craft Fitness: On Writing Exercises

By: Dependency ratio » Real Writing Jobs.

Dependency ratio » Real Writing Jobs. — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 01:04:46 +0000

[...] HTMLGIANT / Craft Fitness: On Writing Exercises [...]

By: Peter Markus

Peter Markus — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:44:36 +0000

The current issues of Unsaid and Black Warrior Review have monosyllabic stories in them.

By: Peter Markus

Peter Markus — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:44:00 +0000

The current issues of Unsaid and Black Warrior Review have monosyllabic stories in them.

By: Amy McDaniel

Amy McDaniel — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 19:01:33 +0000

Just What If. We did a ton of exercises out of it for the first third of the semester, to fill the time before anyone had a story to workshop. We’d always workshop a couple people’s exercise writings. The only other thing that could kind of be called an exercise was that we would read a short story and pretend it was submitted for workshop, and we’d write a critique letter of it. But that was more practice of writing critique letters. But it was also really valuable, I think.

I didn’t get much out of the What If exercises at the time–at least nothing I could turn into a piece–but I have thought about doing some again now. I don’t think I treated them very seriously because at the time I didn’t understand how to move exercise into story. But I think maybe I understand that now. Though maybe the exercises had some kind of effect on the rest of my writing that I’m not consciously aware of–hard to say.

By: Amy McDaniel

Amy McDaniel — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 19:01:00 +0000

By: Tim Jones-Yelvington

Tim Jones-Yelvington — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 18:54:34 +0000

There’s one from that 3:AM Epiphany book I kinda like where you write sentences in response to sentences from another person’s work.

…I always find language-driven prompts work better for me than idea-driven ones… unless the idea ones get combined w/ language ones, like w/ prompt words or something.

I really like the prompts Matthew Simmons has been posting here (like the one abt stuff literally beneath), but have not used them yet.

By: Tim Jones-Yelvington

Tim Jones-Yelvington — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 18:54:00 +0000

There’s one from that 3:AM Epiphany book I kinda like where you write sentences in response to sentences from another person’s work.

…I always find language-driven prompts work better for me than idea-driven ones… unless the idea ones get combined w/ language ones, like w/ prompt words or something.

I really like the prompts Matthew Simmons has been posting here (like the one abt stuff literally beneath), but have not used them yet.

By: Tim Jones-Yelvington

Tim Jones-Yelvington — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 18:50:53 +0000

the inanimate object exercise reminds me a little bit of a weird-ass photo-driven slash fiction story someone sent me once where characters from Stargate were… girl scout cookies, and got it on before getting chomped on.

By: Tim Jones-Yelvington

Tim Jones-Yelvington — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 18:50:00 +0000

By: Justin Hamm

Justin Hamm — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 18:35:56 +0000

This probably isn’t all that original, but to practice description, I use photos or paintings. I’ll simply sit down with the image and handwrite two or three paragraphs of straight description, sometimes trying to render things as clearly and realistically as possible, sometimes trying to infuse the description with lyricism and metaphor. In either case, I shoot for something that sounds fresh, at least to my own ear.

I wish I had the advantage of visiting lots of different places in person, of describing from observation the way a painter might paint from nature in order to improve, but, except in summer, I have serious time constraints (as I’m sure most of us do). Exercises with photos and paintings give me the variety I need to really sharpen my descriptive skills and improve the visual aspects of my writing.