Having gone on and on about how much I dislike writing exercises, I’m now going to talk a bit about how and when I think they’re useful. That would be mainly as very specific, targeted ways of addressing particular problems or writing skills that aren’t as developed as the rest of the writer’s tool set.
Unpacking that a little: Most writers, in my opinion, don’t need to do special exercises on (for example) dialog or description, because their stories give them plenty of opportunity to practice those things. Every once in a while, though, one runs across somebody who just can’t get the hang of something. Maybe it’s because they normally don’t think that way, or maybe they picked up bad habits somewhere along the line, or maybe it’s something that is their absolute least favorite thing in the world to write, so they unconsciously avoid it whenever possible.
Such writers can write whole novels without ever picking up the skill they’re missing, because part of the reason it’s missing is that they consistently leave whatever-it-is out of their work. Sometimes, they don’t even notice that it’s missing until half a dozen beta readers complain bitterly and at length. In my experience, the right writing exercise can go a long way toward fixing the problem, because it forces the writer to address it directly. They can’t avoid writing dialog if the exercise is to do two pages of “talking heads” (dialog and nothing else).
Another use for writing exercises is in helping the writer understand more clearly how to use some of the basic tools in the writing toolbox, like language and punctuation. A lot of the exercises in Ursula le Guin’s excellent Steering the Craft are this sort. Exercises can also help with understanding concepts like “show, don’t tell” and the effect of using different types of viewpoint.
As with so many other things in writing, diagnosis is critical. Doing a bunch of dialog exercises isn’t going to be much help if the real problem is with characterization or viewpoint. That said, here are a few of the exercises I found useful when I was teaching writing classes. If they don’t appeal to you, or if you already know how, skip it and work on your ms.
1. Characterization, word choice, and description. Start with a character of average build, brown hair and eyes. Write a paragraph describing this character in such a way that the reader really likes him/her, using only the character’s physical characteristics. Then describe the exact same character, using the same physical characteristics, so that the reader will dislike and mistrust the character.
2. Description again: Choose a picture of a place. With the picture in front of you, write three paragraphs of description without using any visual cues or images (that means no shapes, colors, etc.). Use only sounds, smells, sensations, and taste. Nouns are OK.
3. Viewpoint: Write a one-page scene in first person. Write it again, from the viewpoint of the same character, in second person, tight-third-person, camera-eye, and omniscient. (If all you do is change the pronouns, you’re missing the point.) For bonus points, do it again in several different formats, e.g., letters, journal, first-person-over-the-shoulder. I did this by accident when I was writing the viewpoint handout I used in my writing classes. I used the same scene to illustrate each kind of viewpoint, and I was amazed by how much I got out of doing that, even though I’d thought I knew quite well what all the differences were.
4. Indirect characterization and description: Describe the contents of a woman’s purse (or someone’s junk drawer, or some other personal collection of miscellaneous useful stuff), so that by the time you’re done, the reader knows a lot about the owner of the purse, junk drawer, or whatever, even though you don’t get to say anything about that person directly.
5. Write two to four sentences summarizing (or “telling”) an event or a character. Then write one-half to two pages dramatizing (or “showing”) the same thing.
6. Viewpoint/characterization. Pick a character from something you’re writing. In either first-person or tight-third-person, write a description of a place (inside, outside, doesn’t matter) using that character as your POV. Pick a different character, and describe the same place in either first-person or tight-third-person from that character’s viewpoint.
7. Anything out of Steering the Craft, mentioned above. I like the no-punctuation, no-adjectives, and short/long sentence exercises best, myself. These exercises aren’t suited to everyone, and a lot of them seem to appeal more to experienced writers than to beginners, but I think they can be useful for anybody.
I’ve done all these sorts of exercises, but almost always with something that I’m currently working on. That way I don’t see it as a boring exercise but as another way to explore the story/novel more deeply.
Some of these look like they would be a lot of fun, as well as helpful. I am terrible at place description, so I definitely think I will be trying #2 and #6 – especially 6, as that one looks like a really good way to tie description into character development.
I detest exercises. But, I sure need them for character development. I’m fuzzy on that, for sure. I also lack in the setting department, using all the senses where needed.
Another great post.
Several of these look fun, especially the viewpoint switch, and the describing a character to be either liked or disliked. 🙂
Alex – Most of these are all meant to be done with places and characters from whatever your current work-in-process is. Or not, if you like, but it’s up to you. Some would be difficult to fit into a larger work because doing things like not using visual images might conflict with the narrative voice, but even then, one can do the exercise and then go back and add visuals later. The kinds of exercises I hate most are the ones that ask me to do something perfectly ordinary, like write a page of dialog, but that insist that I use characters or a situation that has nothing to do with my work.
Louise – When you’re in a tight-third or first-person viewpoint, description pretty much always has a lot to do with the characterization of the viewpoint character, but it’s not something that a lot of writers think about unless they sit down and deliberately describe the same place twice from different viewpoints.
Jean Ann – For some writers, characters just walk into their heads fully formed; other writers have to develop their characters consciously or write their way into them. If you are one of the second sort, as seems likely, you may get some use out of this one: Make a list of twenty things your character has never done (anything from “commit murder” to “go skinny dipping”). Then put an X next to the things he/she would NEVER do, a + next to the things he/she would like to do but hasn’t had the chance to, and an * next to the things you, the writer, might want to make him/her do by the end of the story. You can do the same thing with twenty things your character HAS done, but it’s the stuff he/she hasn’t done that a lot of writers forget to think about. If you want to get really silly, write a scene in which five or six of the characters from your current WIP are sitting around playing “I Never…” and see what comes out. 🙂
Chicory – I try to make up exercises that are fun as well as useful. If it’s not fun, what’s the point? 😀
Such writers can write whole novels without ever picking up the skill they’re missing, because part of the reason it’s missing is that they consistently leave whatever-it-is out of their work.
You rang?
And it wasn’t that I was writing whole novels without description, just that I’d been so tight inside the character’s head that I _only_ gave their reaction to the surroundings and never worked on more neutral description at all, so that every encounter with the scenery ended up being ‘he trudged through the mud’ instead of ‘A muddy lane wound through the valley, deeply rutted and unsuitable for anyone but the most determined walker. More enterprising travellers had chosen to breach the enclosing hedges; undoubtedly the local farmers disapproved.’
What is helping me is instead of ‘do x’ (where I struggle with x, and do it badly, if I do it at all) to pick a passage that works and find out what, exactly, the author is doing, and imitate that. That way I can see what the author is doing, and which tools they use to achieve their goal.
Then I can hitch a ride – use the same tools, but for another context – and once I’ve grokked what is going on, I am better able to use it in my own writing.
green_knight – Well, if that second description of the muddy lane is anything to go by, you’ve certainly figured out description! I’ve used the “look at what somebody else did and imitate it” trick numerous times in my life to figure out various writing techniques. I suspect that doing so works better for analytic types than for intuitive writers, though.
Pat, yeah, I think the finding of telling detail has finally happened – it’s still _work_, but I am more and more able to do it.
After several novels I reached the limited of my intuition – progress since then has been hard won. Usually accompanied by much wailing and trying to stuff techniques into my brain and waiting for them to sink in, but yet – that lane took hardly any effort other than a good look around and a mental step sideways.
What I’m working on now is to make everything flow better – I can find the details, but they’re still somewhat thrown at the page. And the other thing is ‘don’t stay in the character’s head, inhabit their body’
green-knight – “Inhabit the body” is a really good phrase for that. If I recall correctly, your problem wasn’t so much staying in the character’s head as it was staying strictly in their heart – that is, you did all the internal dialog and emotions and even reactions to things, but you had trouble looking out the character’s eyes, hearing anything other than conversation with their ears, etc. It’s also useful to look back every once in a while to remind yourself how far you’ve come, especially when you’re in the middle of a climb and the top of the hill just doesn’t seem to be getting any closer.
Only someone who doesn’t like exercises can come up with really good ones! (It’s like working out. If you don’t like it you’ll try to come up with the most effective and practical ones so you can get the benefit quickly and not waste time doing useless things.)
I really like number 1. I have a character in my current project who i want the MC to hate on sight, but by the end have learned to trust and care for, and another character who starts out completely likable but ends up being vicious and untrustworthy. It would be excellent if I could control this perception and show it to the reader with just description. I will definitely give it a shot.
(I always despised most writing exercises. I remember one that I was given where we were supposed to take something ordinary, like a glass of water, and describe every single detail. But at the end all you had was an excessively long paragraph of meaningless details and nothing else. It wasn’t until I discovered Steering the Craft that I learned how interesting and insightful good exercises could be.)
I like the idea of the viewpoint exercise. But can you explain the difference between first person and first person over-the-shoulder? Thanks!
mongolian – Really, first person is an umbrella term for any story written from an “I” viewpoint (“I came, I saw, I conquored.”) Here, I was using the term as shorthand for the most common type of first-person viewpoint, which is where the reader is essentially sitting inside the viewpoint character’s head, listening to their thoughts and feelings as the POV experiences the story. Stream-of-consciousness is the most extreme form of this. First person over-the-shoulder is more like third-person camera eye – it’s as if the reader is standing right behind the viewpoint character watching everything as it happens, but doesn’t really have full access to the character’s thoughts and feelings unless the character says something (though it can be something too soft for anyone but the reader to overhear). Both of these viewpoints would “show” the story as it happens; memoir-style and telling-the-story-in-a-bar both tell the story after the fact. Does that help?
Ooohh, I can’t wait to try these! Thank you so much for this post.
Now, does anyone know of any excercises for writing from a strict third-person villian POV? I *hate* it! But I am getting practice AND avoiding it by sticking to a tight third-person narrative.