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Writing Exercises

Do we want more writing exercises?


  • Total voters
    12

Immerael

The Shadow Admín
Retired Staff
We are all a community of writers but I've noticed something very sad. Their is little public work on collaborating, constructively criticising and helping each other write. We have a great deal of threads telling newbies what to avoid in their writing of characters and for good reason. However after they pass the entrance exam we basically only let them improve as they do naturally.

I myself have improved in RP writing since I came here a great deal and I know others have as well for example Raykaystar I don't RP with you much but I've noticed you've grown by leaps and bounds since you first joined. However we are all writers and should struggle to improve not just in the limitations of writing in a Minecraft server but generally as writers.

I believe the focus on this will prove helpful to absolutely every single player on the server in not only their RP but their private lives in the real world. Many of you are students still and an improvement in your ability to write will directly translate to improved grades. Others may find improved writing useful in job applications or for the sheer joy of it. Many of us I know harbor the dream of being a professional writer but unless we actually write something it will remain just that. A dream.

Here is a list of writing exercises. I took the list from here. There are literally thousands of similar resources across the internet this just happened to be handy.
  • Pick ten people you know and write a one-sentence description for each of them. Focus on what makes each person unique and noteworthy.
  • Record five minutes of a talk radio show. Write down the dialog and add narrative descriptions of the speakers and actions as if you were writing a scene.
  • Write a 500-word biography of your life. Think about the moments that were most meaningful to you and that shaped you as a person.
  • Write your obituary. List all of your life’s accomplishments. You can write it as if you died today or fifty or more years in the future.
  • Write a 300-word description of your bedroom. Think about the items you have or the other elements of your room that give the best clues about who you are or who you want others to think you are.
  • Write an interview with yourself, an acquaintance, a famous figure or a fictional character. Do it in the style of an appropriate (or inappropriate) publication such as Time, People, Rolling Stone, HuffingtonPost,Politico, Cosmopolitan, Seventeen or Maxim.
  • Read a news site, a newspaper or a supermarket tabloid. Scan the articles until you find something that interests you and use it as the basis for a scene or story.
  • Write a diary or a blog of a fictional character. Write something every day for two weeks.
  • Rewrite a passage from a book, a favorite or a least favorite, in a different style such as noir, gothic romance, pulp fiction or horror story.
  • Pick an author you like though not necessarily your favorite. Make a list of what you admire about the way the author writes. Do this from memory first, without rereading the author’s work. After you’ve made your list, reread some of the author’s work and see if you missed anything or if your answers change. Analyze what elements of that author’s writing style you can add to your own, and what elements you should not or cannot add. Remember that your writing style is your own. Only try to think of ways to add to your style. Never try to mimic someone else for more than an exercise or two.
  • Take a piece of your writing that you have written in first person and rewrite it in third person, or vice-versa. You can also try this exercise changing tense, narrators, or other stylistic elements. Don’t do this with an entire book. Stick to shorter works. Once you commit to a style for a book, never look back or you will spend all of your time rewriting instead of writing.
  • Try to identify your earliest childhood memory. Write down everything you can remember about it. Rewrite it as a scene. You may choose to do this from your current perspective or from the perspective you had at that age.
  • Remember an old argument you had with another person. Write about the argument from the point of view of the other person. Remember that the idea is to see the argument from their perspective, not your own. This is an exercise in voice, not in proving yourself right or wrong.
  • Write a 200-word or longer description of a place. You can use any and all sensory descriptions but sight. You can describe what it feels like, sounds like, smells like and even tastes like. Try to write the description in such a way that people will not miss the visual details.
  • Sit in a restaurant or a crowded area and write down the snippets of conversation you hear. Listen to the people around you. Listen to how they talk and to what words they use. Once you have done this, you can practice finishing their conversations. Write your version of what comes next in the conversation. Match their style.

If you'd like to participate I'd recommend you pick from the above put in quotes and write and post for critique. Some of the above mentions what could be personal things or information. If you aren't comfortable with that just make up names no one will know etc.

I will be posting the writing exercise I chose once I type it up its up so folks may critique it and such.
 
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Immerael

The Shadow Admín
Retired Staff
Write a 300-word description of your bedroom. Think about the items you have or the other elements of your room that give the best clues about who you are or who you want others to think you are.
Response

Messy is the only kind word to describes Storms’ room. A miniature dump is what his mother calls it. As soon as you enter you have to squeeze between a mountain of laundry and his dresser, that has the tips of socks and pants sticking out of their drawers. Winter coats now forgotten hang in front of closet door obscuring a mirror.

Dress shoes, tennis shoes, belts and even a backpack in the corner are scattered across the room. In another corner his PS4 lays where it fell in the night as he stumbled. His trash can is full of Dr. Pepper cans and food wrappers that no matter how often he empties it always seems to be full.

His laptop displays the same tired image it has for the past four years, a white gray image of nothingness. Its power cable is twisted and kept in tension by an Angry Birds piggy bank to keep power flowing to the dilapidated machine. His wireless keyboard and mouse lay on his futon, which looks like some sort of bird’s nest with it caving in the center from many years of roughly falling into bed.

Every bit of wall space is occupied by something either by shelves, posters of games and tv shows or pictures of his niece; a remnant of when he shared this tiny room with his older brother. The shelves are in someplace stacked double with long ago read books, and others are lined with crates of comics. More relics of when his brother lived here.

In the window is the only green, a brilliantly healthy spider plant. Unlike the rest of the room it stands in contrast as its leaves have been pruned of any decay. A long shoot extends from the main plant with tapers off into five new plants their blades tiny but perfect replicas of their mother’s.
 

Raykaystar

Lord of Altera
Thanks for the compliment! You made me happy that someone noticed I've been trying to improve my Role Play work! Thanks :heart:
You're awesome!
 

LiraKitty

Lord of Altera
This is absolutely fabulous! I hope you do not mind me passing this to my daughter. She's an aspiring writer who writes every single day whether she feels like it or not. I know this will help her a good bit on her not days.
 

Immerael

The Shadow Admín
Retired Staff
This is absolutely fabulous! I hope you do not mind me passing this to my daughter. She's an aspiring writer who writes every single day whether she feels like it or not. I know this will help her a good bit on her not days.
By all means. There's tons of online resources I've liked over time on my stumbleaupon account. I may pull some of the best I've found over time since people seem to have liked this so far.

Also guys feel free to critique what you thought was worded strangely, if something is unclear or should be worded better. xD
 

Immerael

The Shadow Admín
Retired Staff
First bit of information dump for Lirakitty and her daughter. I want to preface this list of things to improve your writing both myself and the original author of the list (Stephen King) agree on this, is that the single most important thing is to keep writing. Which doesn't seem to be a problem based on your description if she wants to writer just keep trying. This list is Kings 22 things to improve your writing. I am a fan of King's writing but I recommend she find an author she enjoys as most of them make similar lists or books that could help her.

Original Source: http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2016/03/22-lessons-from-stephen-king-on-how-to-be-a-great-writer/

Immerael's Edit:

#1 Stop watching television. Instead, read as much as possible

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot,” he says. Read widely, and constantly work to refine and redefine your own work as you do so.

(King believes it is poisonous to creativity. I disagree with him as I get some really good ideas from shows. However I do agree reading is much more beneficial to a writer than any tv show. You need to see how other professionals do the job.)

#2 Prepare for more failure and criticism than you think you can deal with
Oftentimes, you have to continue writing even when you don’t feel like it. “Stopping a piece of work just because it’s hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea,” he writes. And when you fail, King suggests that you remain positive. “Optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure.”

(I agree here. Another analogy is "You can be the juiciest most beautiful peach in the orchid but they'll always be someone who just hates peaches.")

#3 Don’t waste time trying to please people
According to King, rudeness should be the least of your concerns. “If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered anyway,” he writes. King used to be ashamed of what he wrote, especially after receiving angry letters accusing him of being bigoted, homophobic, murderous, and even psychopathic.

By the age of 40, he realised that every decent writer has been accused of being a waste of talent. King has definitely come to terms with it. He writes, “If you disapprove, I can only shrug my shoulders. It’s what I have.” You can’t please all of your readers all the time, so King advises that you stop worrying.

#4 Write primarily for yourself
You should write because it brings you happiness and fulfillment. As King says, “I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever.”

Writer Kurt Vonnegut provides a similar insight: “Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about,” he says. “It is this genuine caring, not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.”

#5 Tackle the things that are hardest to write
“The most important things are the hardest things to say,” writes King. “They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings.” Most great pieces of writing are preceded with hours of thought. In King’s mind, “Writing is refined thinking.”

When tackling difficult issues, make sure you dig deeply. King says, “Stories are found things, like fossils in the ground … Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world.” Writers should be like archaeologists, excavating for as much of the story as they can find.

#6 When writing, disconnect from the rest of the world
Writing should be a fully intimate activity. Put your desk in the corner of the room, and eliminate all possible distractions, from phones to open windows. King advises, “Write with the door closed; rewrite with the door open.”

You should maintain total privacy between you and your work. Writing a first draft is “completely raw, the sort of thing I feel free to do with the door shut — it’s the story undressed, standing up in nothing but its socks and undershorts.”

#7 Don’t be pretentious
“One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you’re maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones,” says King. He compares this mistake to dressing up a household pet in evening clothes — both the pet and the owner are embarrassed, because it’s completely excessive.

As iconic businessman David Ogilvy writes in a memo to his employees, “Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious arse.” Furthermore, don’t use symbols unless necessary. “Symbolism exists to adorn and enrich, not to create an artificial sense of profundity,” writes King.

#8 Avoid adverbs and long paragraphs
As King emphasises several times in his memoir, “the adverb is not your friend.” In fact, he believes that “the road to hell is paved with adverbs” and compares them to dandelions that ruin your lawn. Adverbs are worst after “he said” and “she said” — those phrases are best left unadorned.

You should also pay attention to your paragraphs, so that they flow with the turns and rhythms of your story. “Paragraphs are almost always as important for how they look as for what they say,” says King.

#9 Don’t get overly caught up in grammar
According to King, writing is primarily about seduction, not precision. “Language does not always have to wear a tie and lace-up shoes,” writes King. “The object of fiction isn’t grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story.” You should strive to make the reader forget that he or she is reading a story at all.

#10 Master the art of description
“Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s,” writes King. The important part isn’t writing enough, but limiting how much you say. Visualise what you want your reader to experience, and then translate what you see in your mind into words on the page. You need to describe things “in a way that will cause your reader to prickle with recognition,” he says.

The key to good description is clarity, both in observation and in writing. Use fresh images and simple vocabulary to avoid exhausting your reader. “In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it ‘got boring,’ the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling,” notes King.

#11 Don’t give too much background information
“What you need to remember is that there’s a difference between lecturing about what you know and using it to enrich the story,” writes King. “The latter is good. The former is not.” Make sure you only include details that move your story forward and that persuade your reader to continue reading.

If you need to do research, make sure it doesn’t overshadow the story. Research belongs “as far in the background and the back story as you can get it,” says King. You may be entranced by what you’re learning, but your readers are going to care a lot more about your characters and your story.

(This was a personal failing of mine for a long time. My stories would turn into world building pieces which are fine for your notes so everything stays consistent in a story. However as a story that draws people to read. They suck.)

#12 Tell stories about what people actually do
“Bad writing is more than a matter of bad syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do — to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street,” writes King. The people in your stories are what readers care about the most, so make sure you acknowledge all the dimensions your characters may have.

#13 Take risks; don’t play it safe
First and foremost, stop using the passive voice. It’s the biggest indicator of fear. “I’m convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing,” King says. Writers should throw back their shoulders, stick out their chins, and put their writing in charge.

“Try any thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn’t, toss it,” King says.

#14 Realise that you don’t need drugs to be a good writer
“The idea that the creative endeavour and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time,” says King. In his eyes, substance-abusing writers are just substance-abusers. “Any claims that the drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit.”

(This applies to all art I would argue. Artist who rely on drugs to do their work are cheating and limiting themselves.)

#15 Don’t try to steal someone else’s voice

As King says, “You can’t aim a book like a cruise missile.” When you try to mimic another writer’s style for any reason other than practice, you’ll produce nothing but “pale imitations.” This is because you can never try to replicate the way someone feels and experiences truth, especially not through a surface-level glance at vocabulary and plot.

(Side note for a beginner it is a very good exercise to try and replicate another authors style until they can develop their own. Much like how when learning to draw tracing is a valuable teacher. Just make sure you transition past this eventually.)

#16 Understand that writing is a form of telepathy
“All the arts depend upon telepathy to some degree, but I believe that writing is the purest distillation,” says King. An important element of writing is transference. Your job isn’t to write words on the page, but rather to transfer the ideas inside your head into the heads of your readers.

“Words are just the medium through which the transfer happens,” says King. In his advice on writing, Vonnegut also recommends that writers “use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.”

#17 Take your writing seriously
“You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or despair,” says King. “Come to it any way but lightly.” If you don’t want to take your writing seriously, he suggests that you close the book and do something else.

As writer Susan Sontag says, “The story must strike a nerve — in me. My heart should start pounding when I hear the first line in my head. I start trembling at the risk.”

(Again this one is for serious published work I feel more than a training medium. Though if you don't feel something about a story how do you expect to elicit such feelings in a reader? I've personally written lines that I've fought back tears as I've written them because they touched something in me. Were they amazing? Probably not. However I feel like I gave those pieces of work my best effort and truest effort which made it well worth it.)

#18 Write every single day
“Once I start work on a project, I don’t stop, and I don’t slow down unless I absolutely have to,” says King. “If I don’t write every day, the characters begin to stale off in my mind … I begin to lose my hold on the story’s plot and pace.”

If you fail to write consistently, the excitement for your idea may begin to fade. When the work starts to feel like work, King describes the moment as “the smooch of death.” His best advice is to just take it “one word at a time.”

(Back to the first thing I said. This is the most important guideline. Write something. If you're working on a story work on it in some capacity. I have far too many half began stories in my google drive and I regret that I didn't keep going in each one if nothing else than for the practice in writing.)

#19 Finish your first draft in three months
King likes to write 10 pages a day. Over a three-month span, that amounts to around 180,000 words. “The first draft of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three months, the length of a season,” he says. If you spend too long on your piece, King believes the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel.

(This is again advice for a publishing writer but if that's what you're aspiring too its a good idea. There are notable exceptions to this like George R.R. Martin and others that go years working on a draft for a single book. Basically set a deadline for yourself and keep it, is the important part here, not the three months part.)

20 When you’re finished writing, take a long step back
King suggests six weeks of “recuperation time” after you’re done writing, so you can have a clear mind to spot any glaring holes in the plot or character development. He asserts that a writer’s original perception of a character could be just as faulty as the reader’s.

King compares the writing and revision process to nature. “When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees,” he writes. “When you’re done, you have to step back and look at the forest.” When you do find your mistakes, he says that “you are forbidden to feel depressed about them or to beat up on yourself. Screw-ups happen to the best of us.”

#21 Have the guts to cut
When revising, writers often have a difficult time letting go of words they spent so much time writing. But, as King advises, “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”

Although revision is one of the most difficult parts of writing, you need to leave out the boring parts in order to move the story along. In his advice on writing, Vonnegut suggests, “If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out.

(I bolded the truly most important line about revision I think I've ever heard.)

#22 Be healthy, and live a good life

King attributes his success to two things: his physical health and his marriage. “The combination of a healthy body and a stable relationship with a self-reliant woman who takes zero BS from me or anyone else has made the continuity of my working life possible,” he writes.

It’s important to have a strong balance in your life, so writing doesn’t consume all of it. In writer and painter Henry Miller’s 11 commandments of writing, he advises, “Keep human! See people and go places."

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Again this list has been edited from the original to be more applicable and child friendly as I have no idea what age LiraKitty's daughter is. These are not hard and fast rules that a writer should adhere to like a gospel there is a time and place for everything even adverbs. Just consider these things when you write.
 
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