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Articles/Ideas/Prompts Writing Exercises - Fictional Worlds

Prompt One

March 9th 2010 12:20
Your goal for this month might be all about editing, but it's always good to keep the writing juices flowing. To help you keep writing, each week there will be a writing prompt. These are designed to be 500-1, 500 word writing exercises. They don't have to be full stories, as long as they sort of make sense.

This week, take a character from a different project than the one you're currently editing, someone who you are somewhat familiar with but who isn't quite a close friend yet. You will be writing from their point of view.

Your goal is to write 500-1, 000 words about this character traveling through an unfamiliar forest. Have them describe the forest as best they can, trying to figure out types of trees, types of flowers, any animals that they find.
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Week One Pep Talk&Short Exercise

March 8th 2010 12:21
The first few days of March have passed, and the first full week of March is about to begin. You may not be where you wanted to be, but remember that there's still most of a month left.

You might also be frustrated with the big picture problems of your first draft. If you find yourself dreading the words and dreading the work, while you look through the badly written parts that you've figured out, try to find things that you like. Great scenes, great description, real emotion, realistic characterization. Underline those parts or at least make a note of them. You'll find yourself liking your work more, and you'll find that rewriting what you don't like will come to you more easily.

Try to schedule your editing time for the next week, and making plans of exactly what you want done by the end of the week. Don't get too down if you don't make one of your scheduled editing times; life gets in the way sometimes, and you've still got most of the month ahead of you. Find little times to write; part of your lunch hour, any travel time if you can do it, breaks during work or between classes. It adds up.

And if you feel like you're alone-don't worry, I'm behind on my work too.

~Dianna
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Three Editing Links To Help Out

March 5th 2010 12:38
Every week for the rest of this month, I'm going to post either three or five links to good articles about editing fiction, in the hopes that you'll find the information useful or at least interesting. I still haven't made a final list of websites, so if you have a link you think should be listed in one of the posts this month, please send me an email at diannalgunn@gmail.com.

On to the links for this week!

~Ten Editing Tips For Your Fiction MSS a list of tips, some of which I think are great points and some of which I don't know if I like.

~Writerisms and Other Sins: A Writer's Shortcut to Stronger Writing is a really interesting article talking about a few mistakes writers commonly make, particularly about words that many writers overuse.

~Experience Versus Information a blog post discussing one of the points made in Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King. Great thoughts in the post and interesting conversation in the comments as well.

Remember that just as when you're reading anything about the writing process, what works for one writer might not work for another. It depends partially on what genre you're writing in, and largely on what kind of writer you are and what exactly your manuscript looks like at this point. These are just articles to give you ideas when trying new editing techniques over the next month.

That's all for today. Here's hoping for a productive weekend.
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Editing Exercise One: Overused Words

March 4th 2010 12:20
Based on what you've read and worked on so far, make a list of five words you think you overuse. You'll probably-especially in a Nanovel-find an overuse of words like 'was', 'have', 'bloody' if you have a lot of gore, 'beautiful' if your character's exploring a new world. 'Moments' is a big one for me as I've struggled to find new ways of judging time for my world.

Beside each one, when you do your work for the day, do a tally of how many times that word has been used. After you've read your chapters for the day, find a thesaurus and look up similar words. List three similar words that you are comfortable using beside each word that you overuse, and then replace each word you overuse at least once in your chapters for the day. Keep this list close to you when you're editing the rest of your novel


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A Prompt To Distract Yourself

March 2nd 2010 12:39
Your goal for this month might be all about editing, but it's always good to keep the writing juices flowing. To help you keep writing, each week there will be a writing prompt. These are designed to be 500-1, 500 word writing exercises. They don't have to be full stories, as long as they sort of make sense.

This week, take a character from a different project than the one you're currently editing, someone who you are somewhat familiar with but who isn't quite a close friend yet. You will be writing from their point of view


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Introduction To An Editing Workshop

March 1st 2010 12:12
Today is the first day of March. It is also the first day of Nanoedmo, a month during which many writers work on editing and some reach for the goal of 50 hours of editing. In honour of these events, and considering the fact that I am also editing my novel this month, I decided at the beginning of this year that I would be doing an editing workshop in March.

Most writers experience some difficulties while writing their books, but for most of us, when we get past that point, we discover that writing is the easy part: rewriting is the hard part


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Characterization Workshop: The End

February 20th 2010 12:29
Hopefully you've gotten to know your characters better over the last week and gotten used to writing in their voices. These exercises are designed to help you create real characters with distinctive voices. If these exercises have helped you, I would love to hear from you what you enjoyed about them. If you have any suggestions for characterization exercises in October, please send me an email at diannalgunn@gmail.com.

Now that you're done the workshop, go back to your character profile and fill in anything that you didn't know about your character before that you do now. If you want to send me your responses to these exercises at any time down the road, send me an email with Characterization Exercises in the subject line. If you want a critique, mention that in the email itself and I'll get back to you as quickly as possible


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Day Four: Final Prompts

February 19th 2010 12:51
Today you're going to write 300-500 words per character to a prompt of your choice. You can do this as the character freewriting about the topic, or as a scene related to the topic. What you write should be first person from the character's PoV.

You may want to do more than one prompt for each of your characters. This is perfectly acceptable


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Day Three: Character Interviews

February 18th 2010 12:29
Today you're going to interview each of your characters. Either you, the author, or another character who is involved with your world's media will interview them.

Some of the questions your character is asked will depend on your story, your world, and your character. You'll want to ask about hobbies, interests, and their feelings about the events of your story. Depending on what your character's story is before the book, you might ask some questions about the character's past. You might also want to ask what the character's plans for the future are


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Day Two: Dear Diary

February 17th 2010 12:29
Today you're going to write a diary entry for each of your characters. This is not going to be an entry about an ordinary day, but it will be an entry about an important day in the life of your character. It should be a turning point in their life. It could be the day of a breakup, a death in the family, or the day your character found a new job or got accepted to a good school. Anything that changes your character's life in a major way.

It doesn't have to be an unpleasant event, just an important one. Make sure that you are writing from the character's PoV, and that it sounds like it's really them. This is a diary entry, so it should be in the first person, using 'I'. Each entry should be 300-500 words long


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Day One: Expanded Character Profiles

February 16th 2010 12:16
Today you are going to create a profile for each of your characters. If you've already made character profiles for these characters, don't worry. These profiles are more detailed than the basic profile (link) that I asked you to complete in the October pre-Nano workshop. Fill them out to the best of your ability. If you find yourself drawing a blank on one of the areas, you know you need to pay more attention to that part of your character's life.

Name


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Characterization Workshop: Intro

February 15th 2010 14:08
This workshop is designed to help you get to know the important characters in your novel. You should already have a sense of who they are and what they do/what drives them after writing your first draft. Through questions and prompts, you will get to know three characters of your choosing.

If you want commentary on your responses to these exercises, either comment on the posts with your responses or email them to me at diannalgunn@gmail.com. I will respond to these emails as soon as I can, probably within three days


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5 Great Websites/Blog Posts

February 5th 2010 12:22
I've decided that every Friday I'm going to blog a list of great blog posts, websites, and/or markets. This is part of an attempt to try to regulate my writing and my blogging.

Today's list consists of three interesting blog posts and two interesting websites, in no particular order as usual


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Making A Workshop List

February 3rd 2010 12:06
As some of you already know, this year I want to do a workshop that lasts at least one week on my blog. These are meant to be intense, short workshops. In January I did a workshop on Organizing Your Novel, and this month I'll be doing a workshop on characterization. These workshops are designed to help writers with a first draft figure out what they want their story to look like in the next draft, and to help them figure their characters out as well.

I've come up with a theoretical list of workshops for the next year. I'm hoping for some input on what you think would be most useful. Take a look at my list and let me know what you think. Suggestions are welcome


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Day Six: Outline your next draft

January 24th 2010 12:26
Today you're going to make an outline not of your novel as it is but of your novel as you feel it should be. This means making up a list of scenes, in order from storyline first to last. Include the scenes/chapters that you want to add, and the ones that you want to delete. Cross out the ones that you want to delete so that you know that they exist and need to be removed. Put stars beside the ones you know need the most work.

Once you've made your outline answer the following questions


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Day Five: Throwaways and Add Ons

January 23rd 2010 12:52
Today you're going to make two lists.

The first list is a list of scenes you want to add to your novel. These scenes must add to your novel in some way-they must develop your characters, help your readers understand your world, or advance the plot. You've already got a full first draft, and anything you add to that needs to be worth the extra padding


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Day Four: Outlining Your Draft

January 22nd 2010 12:24
Today you're going to create an outline for your finished first draft. You can look at some of my posts written on different methods of outlining, which you can find
starting with this post, this post on the Snowflake method, this post about the Phase Outline, and this review of the Three Act Method. The series ends with this post (clicky). Today we're going to use a very basic method of outlining, but you can use a different one if you like.

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Day Three: Questions About Style And A Great Blog Post

January 21st 2010 12:34
Today you're going to be asking yourself some questions about your own personal strengths and weaknesses. But first I wanted to mention that I found a really interesting blog post (clicky) talking about good books to read about writing. An interesting post and an interesting blog.

Answer the following


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Day Two: Questions About Tone

January 20th 2010 12:11
Today you're going to finish reading your manuscript if you haven't done so already, summarize your novel in no more than 200 words, and answer the following questions:

~What is the main theme of your novel? What is it's message/what do you want to accomplish by telling this story


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Day One: Reread

January 19th 2010 12:29
Today read as much of your book as you possibly can find time for. Don't correct anything. You can print out your novel for this, but I think it's a waste of time, paper, and ink.

Don't correct anything. If something bothers you, mark it off with an asterisk or put a star in the margin and keep reading


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