Exercises and Tips

For this page, I thought it would be fun to place helpful tips and writing exercises on it to help nurture the creative mind and stretch the literary muscles. I will also participate in the exercises and post my results on the Samples page. If you would like to give these exercises a whirl, I will be happy to post your piece as well.

Helpful Tips

Character Building

Building characters is paramount to writing. Without good characters, even the best planned story can fall apart. I have done quite a bit of research into building characters over the years, and I know I still have much to learn about them. One tool that I did create, to help me with this process, is my Character Profile Sheet. It is a list of questions that you answer about your character. It is usually the first step I use in creating my characters. I don't, however, reserve this process just for my main characters. I use it for ALL of my characters. The one difference is in the amount of detail that you fill in. For my main characters, I generally answer most, if not all, of the questions. However, with my secondary characters, I may not take time to answer all the questions. Just those important to the particular story the character shows up in. One thing that I have noticed about using this sheet is that I find some of my other characters interesting themselves and tend to develop other stories about them through this process. So click the link below to see the sheet. You will need Adobe Reader to read the file. If you do not have it, follow the download link to download the newest version of Adobe Reader.

Character Profile Sheet

Download Adobe Acrobat Reader

Cultures and Societies

One of the more difficult tasks I face with any sort of creative writing is depicting believable places for my characters to exist. It is especially difficult when you are dealing with fictional writing, and even more so when it is science fiction. Recently I have been dealing with issues surrounding truth in my writing. I want to stay away from the main stream of Science Fiction, but at the same time, I want to make it as real as possible.

One of the more difficult issues I have been facing is what would real extraterrestrial life forms look like, and more importantly, what type of culture would they come from? When looking at this issue, I have found a few things that really need to be considered before coming up with a truly believable alien life form.

First and for most is how would any extraterrestrial life view us and the world we live on? Would they see us as equals or primitive life forms? I don't think I would go as far them viewing us as a form of sustenance. Any civilization that has advanced as far as we have today may look primitive, but I do not hold the belief that we would appear to be mere livestock going about a menial existence. If so, then the life form would have to be so far advanced than ourselves, that our society, or our world for that matter, would not hold much appeal for them. I believe that at worst, we would be looked upon much as Columbus did the natives when he discovered the new world, and at best, be treated as near equals to any alien visitors.

Secondly, what kind of cultural and evolutionary history would they have? Much has been studied about our own history and how life may have started on this planet. But a good question to ask is "did life start on their home world the same way, or was it something completely different?"

There are many more questions to be asked when creating a good believable culture outside the known world. This is also very true for cultures that make up our own world today. With this in mind, I would like to offer a Culture Profile Sheet that I created and use when thinking about different people and their societies. It is geared more toward Science Fiction, but it can also be a help when researching existing cultures on our planet. Please select the link below to view the sheet. As before, you will need Adobe Reader to view the sheet.

Culture Profile Sheet

Exercises

Week of September 7, 2007

Exercise 1

For this exercise, I challenge you to create a journal. I realize that you probably just had a flash back to your high school English courses, and you have images of creating voodoo dolls of your instructors and sticking them with pins, stomping up and down on it, giving it to the dog as a chew toy, but I promise you that it won't be all that bad.

I have always thought that in order to be a good writer you would first need to be good at collecting your thoughts in a daily journal. That scared me because I can't get myself to write in a journal once a week, let alone once a day. But I was inspired to try this journaling thing after reading an article in the Writer's Digest magazine. (I can't remember the which issue it was in at this time.)

The article explained journaling in a much clearer light than any of my past instructors. There are two type of "journals" that you can keep. One is the well known diary and the other is, well, a journal. The difference being that a diary covers your personal life, your feelings, secrets, and inner explorations about yourself that you more than likely do not want to share with the outer world. This is also usually done on a daily basis. Where as a journal still can explore these same topics, but it also includes observations about the world around you. The article also stressed that a journal is not something that you should feel pressured into writing everyday. I feel that a rigid schedule like that turns writing into more of a chore, and who really looks forward to chores? Sometimes you may write a couple entries a day, were as other times it may be once a week, or once a month. I tend to follow the later.

I have started doing a bit of journaling, and I'm glad I have. It's been a good way to get started on my writing projects. If I don't feel that I have anything to write, I turn to my journal and pen a few lines. It helps me to stay connected to writing without forcing myself once a day to sit down and enter something, and I realize that I don't have to be perfect when I do it. I simply put down what I am thinking and any observations I may have, then move on. No revising involved.

So if you feel that you are stuck a bit for writing, start a journal and just see what happens. But remember, don't turn it into a chore. Turn to it during the times you feel you need to get something off your chest, or when you are exploring a topic, or even dabbling with a different form of writing. If you would like to share any entries, please feel free to E-mail them to me and I will be happy to post them. I hope you give this a try.

Week of September 14, 2007

Exercise 1

Sit on your front steps, at a picnic table in the part, or on a bench in a mall. Take in the scene that lays before you. The sights, scents, and people that play a roll Try to describe the scene in as few words possible, but still giving enough content to make it interesting.

Exercise 2

Take Exercise 1 to the next level. Pick a subject out and try to come up with an unusual story about the subject. Examples would be to tell the story of the guy shuffling along through the mall, the car that just sped down your quiet neighborhood, or a story about the neighbor that you see only as they peek through the narrow opening of their front door.

Week of October 19, 2007

Exercise 1

This is an oldie, but a goodie. Write a scene comprised solely of dialog. Normally, too much dialog can be distracting or confusing, but there are those rare times when the dialog tells the story. See what you can do.

Exercise 2

The other option is to write a tense, emotional, or dramatic scene between two characters where you do not use dialog at all. Examples would be two characters sizing each other up in an aggressive manner. Another could be a man and a woman noticing each other for the first time. What are their thoughts, there emotions, their fears or hopes?

Last Updated October 17, 2007