Get Writing

Ray Bradbury has a wonderful essay on Meeting the Muse.  He believes you need to make an appointment to meet your muse at the same time and place each day.  Daily writing is the only way, he believes, to find your muse and make her your best friend.

As a teacher of writing, I always remind students that writing is like anything else we have to learn.  It takes practice.  If you want to be a great basketball player, you have to play basketball every day.  If you want to be a great piano player, you have to play the piano every day.  So why should it comes as a shock that if you want to be a writer, you have to write every day?  So, with that thought in mind, I thought I would post some of my favorite writing prompts.

To explore POINT OF VIEW:

Point of View is crucial to consider.  A writer needs to plop themselves in the character’s head and see everything from the this character’s perspective.

SCENE 1: Write a description of a lake from the point of view of a serial killer.

SCENE 2: Write a description of the same lake from the point of view of the victim.

It’s amazing how the same scene is completely different when written from different Points of View. 

To strengthen the rule SHOW DON’T TELL:

Write three paragraphs titled FEAR, ANGER, and JOY.  For each paragraph, show the emotion in the title without ever using the word.

To understand your CHARACTER:

1) Answer this question in one sentence or, even better, in one word: What does this character want? Make sure you can answer this question for each of your main characters.  If you can’t, do they really need to be in the story?

2) Summarize your character’s progress through the story in three sentences.  For example: 1)Snowhite almost gets killed by the Queen’s guard.  2) Snowhite is almost killed again with poisoned apple while living with seven dwarfs.  3) Snowhite falls in love with Prince.

3) You can try this with when practicing your query letter.  Try to get your pitch down to three sentences. 

To Outline or Not To Outline:

Some people are huge fans of in depth outlines.  Barbara Taylor Bradford sold her first novel just on her extensive outline.  Other writers feel boxed in with an outline.  Syndey Sheldon said he always starts with a character and lets her tell him the story.  John Updike can’t write a word until he has the last sentence of his novel written.  Ken Follet falls somewhere in between.  He likes to write a basic outline and let the characters fill in the rest. 

I hate outlines because I’m usually too excited about my characters and their story to pause long enough to write an outline.  But I do have these amazing character analysis sheets a fellow writer gave me.  And I’m pretty religious about filling these out before starting a new story.  These sheets make me feel out the story through the eyes of the character, and when I’m done I’ve usually got an outline in my head.  I tend to have a general idea about where I’d like the story to go, but I agree with Sydney Sheldon and lean more towards letting the characters tell the story. 

Try an outline before starting your next story.  Maybe try writing the last line first.  Fill out a character analysis sheet.  See which works best for you.  We can’t discover our writing style until we try many strategies.  Either way, write, write, write!

PHONE A STORY

This is a good exercise to cure writer’s block and have a few laughs.  First you brainstorm 10 characters, 10 personality traits, settings and problems.  Then, using the last four digits of your phone number, you create a story.  For example, if we used the chart below and the last four digits of your phone number were 0321, you’d have to write a story about  an egotistical alien on a farm who can’t swim.  Or if your digits were 3210, you’d have to write a story about a scared police officer who’s failing at running a farm. 

Number	Character	Character Trait	Problem	Setting
0	Alien	Sad	Broken space ship	farm
1	Student	Angry	Failing	School
2	Life guard	Scared	Can’t swim	beach
3	Police Officer	Egotistical	Missing handcuffs	jail
4
5
6
7
8
9

 VOYEUR’S DELIGHT

This exercise flexes your observation muscles.  As you go about your day, whether you’re on a subway, sitting at a restuarant, or visiting the park, choose one stranger and observe him/her.  Create a life story in your mind for this person.  What does she most want in life?  What’s his biggest regret?  What’s her worst secret? What keeps him up at night? Then a write a descriptive story about this person.  You can even do this story with houses.  If there’s a house that always catches your eye on your daily run or commute to work, create a story about this house and all the people that have lived there.

I’ll continue to post more writing prompts.  If you have a great one, send it to me and I’ll post it here with your info.