Confession time:
When it comes to writing exercises, I used to be a cynic. A nonbeliever. Write
a diary entry in my character’s voice? Write a letter from one character to
another? Interview my character? Seriously? All I thought was “big ole waste of
time.”
To write words
that would never make it in the actual book seemed absurd. Pointless. Dare I
admit, pretentious. Why waste the precious minutes and hours I have to write on
words that no one but me will ever read?
Hold on a sec,
while I swallow this last bite of crow. Gulp.
Okay, so the
answer that won me over is this: because sometimes words, things, events you
never expected have a way of weaseling their way into your book. Even form the
backbone of your book. At least that’s what happened to me.
Let me
backtrack. The first fiction book I ever wrote took me three years. I was a
pantser, not out of any firm belief or philosophy, but out of ignorance. I
didn’t know any better. I sat down to write and soon discovered I had no idea
where my story was going, what my characters would do, should do, what they
wanted, that they even had to want something. The end result was a manuscript
in need of serious revision.
I began to read craft
books, but in every one, I flipped right past all the pages about writing
exercises and writing prompts. After years of rewriting, my first book found
its plot, my characters found their voice, and my book found its way into my
heart. I loved it, but when it came to writing my next book, I wasn’t about to
have a repeat performance.
When the idea
for BECOMING JINN came to me, I wrote down the concept, the main characters,
and what I thought then would be my three disasters (which though not exactly
what they are now, are pretty close). Before going further, I enrolled in a
novel planning course with author James Scott at Grub Street in Boston.
He made me a
plotter. Though I’d read advice on story planning and structure, it wasn’t
until James put his particular spin on them that the light bulbs started
glowing above my head.
His techniques
helped me write BECOMING JINN, my second fiction book, in two months instead of
three years. Revisions were fast and targeted. And now, more than a year and a
half later, I still reach for the big black binder of “Research on Writing”
that I put together, starting with handouts from that class.
While I still
have much to learn about writing, and while I’m sure I won’t be quite as good a
teacher as James, over the course of my next few blog posts I hope to share
some of the key concepts that converted me from a floundering panster to a
happy plotter.
Today, I’ll
start with the general concept of writing exercises. The writing exercises I’m
talking about are different from writing prompts. Think of a prompt as a way
to rev your engine. Press down on that accelerator by doing some “freewriting”
to get you in the mood to write, to overcome writer’s block, or to explore a
potential concept or idea. A writing prompt could be anything from “write your
earliest memory in the first person” to “set a timer for thirty minutes and
write a story using the words ‘muffin,’ ‘spaceship,’ and ‘clown.’”
Incidentally, Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles has its origin in a writing
prompt: set a story in the future and include a fairy-tale character. That
particular prompt clearly served Ms. Meyer well.
Many writers
swear by writing prompts. While useful, I’m more into writing exercises. The
ones presented in the course I took have become the core of the work I do while
planning my books and even reappear during my drafting and revising stages. If
I suddenly plop my characters in a new location, I refer to my setting
exercises. If a new character appears or a minor character needs to be amped
up, I go back to the questions that help me create a character profile.
Over the course
of my next few posts, I plan to share the concepts I find most useful when
thinking about character, setting, structure, beginnings, and endings. I’ll also
list some of my favorite writing exercises for each. And I’ll get back to that
question that formed the backbone of my book (look for it next month in my
December 4th post on character).
But since I
started this introductory post by saying I was a cynic when it came to writing
exercises, let me end by sharing what made me a believer.
I was sitting in
the novel planning course, inwardly scoffing at the questions James had written
on the whiteboard and asked us to answer about setting. We were to take a
scene, either one we were working on or one we had yet to begin, and answer
eight questions about the scene’s location. The questions included:
1. What’s above your
characters’ head?
2. At their
feet?
3. To their left
4. To their
right?
5. What time of
day is it and how do you know?
6. What season
is it? How do you know?
7. What can they
smell?
8. What can they
hear?
Picking the
scene I thought would start BECOMING JINN, I forced myself to put pen to paper
and answer the questions. I went through them one by one, creating the living
room in my character Azra’s house. From an interior designer’s standpoint, the
finished digs were beautiful. Sleek, modern, with a white sofa and silver
arched floor lamp. It was a nice room, one I wouldn’t mind living in. But it
was not Azra’s living room. It was not the living room of her mother, Kalyssa, a Jinn with Moroccan roots who spent her
life traveling the world to grant wishes. Gone was the black and white
geometric rug and in was a crimson Turkish prayer rug. The coffee table
switched out its glass for hand-carved wood. They couldn’t smell anything from
the outside because Jinn hate the cold and even in the summer keep their
windows shut to seal in the warmth.
The simple eight
questions on setting put me in my characters’ shoes. And unexpectedly, I not
only learned things about where they lived but also about who they were.
Pretty powerful
stuff. Enough to turn me into a plotter. I now love and rely on writing
exercises to help me plan my novels.
What about you?
Do you use writing exercises? Have I convinced you to try? Check back next
month when I share the ones I use to create my character profiles.
