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An Un-Friday Not-Quite Writing Exercise

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Rosanna Stevens

Jul 27, 2010

Are you finding Friday Writing Exercises tie your knickers in a knot? Feeling anxious? Are you reaching the end of the blog post, opening a word document, and flopping toward the pantry door Piderman-style, in the hope you’ll chance upon food that was invisible five minutes earlier?

Unfortunately the pantry will only continue to offer stale starch, a strange breed of savoury conserve from a 2006 Christmas hamper, and a ransacked packet of snakes featuring only stiff orange and yellow. Worse still, you’ve given up on tapping out a Friday Writing Exercise post. The latter is a grand shame – I can only imagine the deliciously imaginative things you would have written (far better than anything in that bland old pantry).

I stumbled across (i.e. a very cool friend of mine linked me) this piece of fantastic last week, and couldn’t help but daydream about some of the wild responses y’all would invent. It’s not Friday, and this isn’t quite a writing exercise, but it might just loosen up those joints in lieu of the end of this week.

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Friday Writing Exercise

5 comments

Cathy Tran

Jul 24, 2010

Personally, I find descriptions to be the hardest part of a story. See, what happens is that I’ll have a rough plot in my head and there’s this part in the narrative that I desperately want to get to, because that’s the part I have the words for. But what about the other parts? What about setting up the scene, creating an image of my characters or adding that extra bit of depth? That’s unfortunately where the clichés come in.

For this exercise, I’m going to give you the beginnings of a sentence that requires you to follow up with a description. See if you can expand on it; create characters or scenes or emotions. As always, work with the first thing that pops into your head. However, watch out for phrases that you’ve read before, see if you can twist them round.

Bonus points if you can guess where I stole these from:

He looked down at me from his pedestal. ‘Have faith.’ Having faith in him was like…

To start the bar I’d borrowed as much as I could from every place that would lend me money, and I’d almost repaid it all. Things were settling down. Up until then, it had been a question of sheer survival, of keeping my head above water, and I didn’t have room to think of anything else. I felt like I’d…

That’s all it was. A huge plate of fat. His fingers found the fork. It seemed as if I was watching…

What they are hanging from is hooks. The hooks have been set into the brickwork of the Wall, for this purpose. Not all of them are occupied. The hooks look like…

Friday Writing Exercise

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Madeleine Crofts

Jul 17, 2010

This exercise is about something you probably do every day anyway and if you don’t well then it’s time to start! It’s about: eavesdropping! Which is a wonderful word isn’t it? Time to drop some eaves people!

Eavesdropping on other people’s conversations can sometimes help with a piece of writing when you least expect it to, you are walking along thinking about something else then someone says something brilliant and you know how to keep going with that poem or story. But we are going to use eavesdropping consciously, to start to train your brain to be on the lookout for interesting words or phrases.

Your challenge is to start listening to other people’s conversations. Subtly of course. On the tram or the train, in the office, at school – anywhere! You need to find 5 phrases that grab you and write them down. Share them here on the blog! Then take all 5 and try and write them into an imagined conversation.

Remember we’re thinking about the way people actually talk and what makes their dialogue real and fresh and exciting to hear. Go forth and listen!

Friday Writing Exercise

1 comment

Cathy Tran

Jul 09, 2010

In this exercise we’re going to work on making a character. Whip out your pen, paper and timers please and think of a person. It doesn’t have to be a complicated person, someone as simple as a male jogger or 12 year old schoolgirl will do. Now answer these questions.

1. What is your character afraid of?
2. What does your character do to de-stress?
3. What makes your character angry?
4. Who was the last person your character talked to on the phone?
5. In what position does your character sleep?

Set your timer to ten minutes and go! Throw this character into something and see what happens. It helps to have background information in order to figure out how he/she/it will react to certain situations.  You don’t have to include any of the answers to the questions in the piece, they’re just there to shape your character and spur you on if you get stuck.

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Friday Writing Exercise

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Madeleine Crofts

Jun 25, 2010

Take a piece of paper and write ten sentences that each start with the words ‘Your mother’. The sentences don’t have to be related or connected to each other. Try to write quickly, writing the first things that come to your mind.

You should now have ten sentences that start with Your mother. If you like, choose one of those sentences and keep writing for about ten minutes. See what you get.

This exercise is good because the words Your mother have a lot in them. They set up three characters essentially, the narrator which is the ‘I’, another person which is the ‘you’ and of course, their mother. And mothers are typically an interesting subject, and if you are saying something about someone else’s mother then there is a wealth of potential for conflict, tension or humour there.

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Friday Writing Exercise

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Madeleine Crofts

Jun 18, 2010

For this exercise you need paper, a pen and a timer. There is one here (http://www.online-stopwatch.com/full-screen-stopwatch/) online if you need it. Set the timer to countdown ten minutes.

Now grab the book that is nearest to you. It needs to be a book, not a brochure or a magazine or a paper. A real, honest-to-goodness book. But it doesn’t matter which book.

Open it at page thirty-six and count seven lines down. Write this seventh line down on your piece of paper. Start writing. If you get stuck, rewrite the line from page 36. Write it over and over if you have to until something else comes out of the pen. Trust me, something else will come. Don’t stop writing for the whole ten minutes, don’t reread or edit or censor yourself. Just keep going. Stop at the end of ten minutes and see what you’ve got.

This exercise is good for getting started in a writing session, getting some words down on the page, but with a little help from another writer. It can be hard getting started, getting your writing muscles going. This helps. Do it more than once, using different books and different page and line numbers. Do it with a newspaper or a magazine. Change it up!

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Friday Writing Exercise

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Madeleine Crofts

Jun 11, 2010

For this exercise you need some tear-up-able paper and a pen. Take your paper and tear it into 6 pieces, each big enough to write a couple of words on. Also this random word generator makes this exercise all the more random.

Take three of your pieces of paper and write a noun on each. That could be any kind of noun, concrete noun, abstract noun, common noun. Noun away! So for example, I might write:

Belonging

Flame

Apple

Then take your remaining three pieces of paper and write three adjectives. Describing words. For example:

Derogatory

Shining

Powerful

Now put them together so you have three phrases. I got:

Powerful Belonging

Shining Apple

Derogatory Flame

Hmm.. Now choose a phrase and write from it for 10 minutes. Set that timer! See what you get, take it any way it goes. You don’t even have to use that specific phrase if you don’t want to. This exercise can be great for making great connections and images appear.

Emerging Writers Festival Writing Exercises

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Madeleine Crofts

May 25, 2010

I’m sure you know that the Emerging Writers Festival is on from now until the end of this weekend, and I’d encourage you to get out and get involved!

One really easy way to get involved is to head over to the Online Program website and try your hand at my Online Creative Writing Bootcamp.

Friday writing exercisers, there won’t be an exercise posted this Friday – so get writing over there instead!

Also catch me running a real-life workshop at the City Library, Seminar Room, tomorrow from 6-7pm. Bring yourself and pen and paper. More info here.

Friday Writing Exercise

3 comments

Madeleine Crofts

May 21, 2010

A couple of weeks ago the illustrious Sam Cooney drew out attention on this blog to the beauty (or horror) of opening lines. There he was simply drawing our attention, but I say let’s go back to this and use them. Exploit them!

I’ve picked out four opening lines that Sam posted, both here and on his own blog. Your challenge is to take one of these lines and write a paragraph, a scene, a story or heck even a novel from them. Try and write freely and without self-censorship. Leave that silly editing and rewriting for later. Take an opening line and just write. See where you go.

From Wells Tower we get:

‘Bob Munroe woke up on his face. His jaw hurt and morning birds were yelling and there was a real discomfort in his underpants.’

‘Sometimes, sometimes, after six or so large drinks, it seems like a sane idea to call my little brother on the phone.’

And from Peter Carey:

‘My father was in his fifties but he kept himself in good shape. His skin was brown and his muscles still firm.’

‘The first reports of dematerializing people were not generally believed and were suppressed by the media.’

For the adventurous types out there, try a paragraph from each of the four lines. Or grab the nearest book to you and take the opening line from that and write from there. Try not to self-censor, reread or edit. That stuff is for later – the exercise is for writing!

Remember, if you try the exercise and don’t want to post the results, please post comments on how it went anyway – what you got out of it. We’d love to hear.

Friday Writing Exercise

8 comments

Madeleine Crofts

May 14, 2010

Third week in of Friday Writing Exercises and we are going great guns!  We’ve had posts about spelling at school on a wet afternoon, bogan window-cleaners planning their holidays, angsty couples inside while it rains outside, a dog named WOGGER and some sinister book burning activities.

Just remember that if you do the exercise but don’t want to post it up as a comment we’d still love to hear how you’ve gone and if you found it inspiring or boring or awful or great. We’d also love to know things like how long it took you, where you did the exercise, how many other people you roped into writing with you, etc.

Now to this week’s exercise. It’s a form of freewriting with a little more structure. Freewriting is basically the idea that you set yourself a time limit and write continuously until the time is up. That means keeping the pen moving the whole time, no going back and rereading, no editing – nothing. With practice, it’s a great way to avoid self-censoring and apathy. It’s great for those moments of ‘God I have nothing to write about.’ and those of ‘Everything I write is utter crap.’

So first find a timer. A stopwatch is good or one on a new-fangled fancy mobile phone is good too. Here’s one online for you lazy types. Set the timer to 10 minutes.

Now write down the words I remember on your paper. And this exercise is probably better done on paper, less chance of deleting and going back over things.

Now start the timer and write! Every time you feel stuck or like the writing isn’t going anywhere just write the words I remember and see what comes next. If you are really stuck write I remember I remember I remember over and over until something else comes out of the pen. And trust me, it will.

The most important thing is to not stop writing until the time is up. Keep the pen moving across the page!

For those adventurous kids out there, try this same exercise but with the words I’ve forgotten instead.