Bones Writing Exercises

My prompts for this week are:

1. "Surprise. Write a short scene about a character you’ve become familiar with over time—either your own fictional creation or a character based on someone you know. Start the scene by letting the character do what you expect this character to do. But at some point in the sequence of events, allow the character to do something completely out of character. Let the character surprise you. This exercise demands that you consider what is expected and unexpected in a character. You may want to make a list, behind the writing of this scene, of the kinds of things this character usually does; and another list of the sorts of things this character would never do."

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2. "A little frustrated with your sentence structure? Can’t figure out why your writing just doesn’t seem to have the right ring
to it? Often, this is the result of a lack of variety in sentence structure. If you examine the sentence structure of well-published authors, you’ll see that they tend to use a lot of variety, not only in the structure of their sentences, but also in the length of their sentences. Try out this exercise to help you gain a feel for different kinds of sentence structure.

***

Find a passage of prose from your favorite author and copy it down onto paper. As you’re doing so, take note of the way the sentences are put together. (Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to diagram them — although that wouldn’t be a bad exercise.)

After you’ve copied the passage down, I want you to copy it again. But this time, I want you to change all the words while keeping the sentence structure intact. This might be especially useful if you find a passage of similar length from some of your own writing and then rewrite it using the EXACT same sentence structure as the paragraph you’ve just copied. This means it will have almost the exact same number of words, the exact same punctuation, etc. But it will be a completely different story. Here’s an example of a sentence altered in this way:

Original sentence (from Moby Dick): “Now, in calm weather, to swim in the open ocean is as easy to the practised swimmer as to ride in a spring-carriage ashore.”

Exercise sentence: “Now, with rock-bottom interest rates, to invest in the real estate market is as accessible to the novice investor as to participate in an IRA.”

Notice there are some small differences in sentence structure, but the structure of the sentence as a whole remains intact. If you try this technique out with an entire paragraph, you’ll be surprised at how much you can learn!"

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My prompts for this week:

1. Obsession

2. Light

Just a quick show of hands: is anyone still using these prompts and exercises? It's absolutely OK if no one is, but if that's the case, I'm just going to stop gathering and posting them.

L.

*raises hand and bounces up and down like a toddler on a sugar-high* Me! Me!

I've been away all summer so have only just found them all now, but I definitely want to use some of them. Please keep posting if it's not too much trouble for you...

Hiya, Bertie. If you're still interested, that's good enough for me. I'll be back with another prompt or exercise.

L.

Since Bertie's still grooving on these:

"Think of a novel or story that once moved you profoundly. (And by the way,'move profoundly' could mean made you laugh as well as made you shudder). Perhaps it is even the work of fiction that inspired you to write. Very rapidly, write from memory the part or scene that has stuck with you all these years. Don't hesitate to make it your own. That is to say, change names, put yourself into the story, use your own materials and ideas. This work of fiction inspired you once; now let it inspire you again, and make it your own. "

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Instead of continuing to post exercises and prompts once or twice a week, I've compiled 52 into an RTF document. That works out to about a prompt a week for a year. The file's in RTF, so you should be able to open it with non-MS-Word word processors, too. I've uploaded the document [Only admins are allowed to see this link]. Please let me know if you download it, as it did take me some time to put it together. One thing worth keeping in mind is that you can write from your point of view or a character's point of view.

I hope some of you find this document useful. If you run into any issues or have any comments or suggestions, give me a holler. As always, Happy Writing!

L.

Lerdo -

Downloaded and already perusing for inspiration. Thanks...not just for these but for all of the prompts you and Wills have posted. I know I haven't posted in a bit....suffering a bit from the block and the unable-to-finish-anything-I-start syndrome....but i have been checking in each week for ideas...and these have helped me to keep trying.....which I guess is the important thing...though have to say an acutal complete story would be pretty dandy right about now...

AnabelleG wrote:Lerdo -

Downloaded and already perusing for inspiration. Thanks...not just for these but for all of the prompts you and Wills have posted. I know I haven't posted in a bit....suffering a bit from the block and the unable-to-finish-anything-I-start syndrome....but i have been checking in each week for ideas...and these have helped me to keep trying.....which I guess is the important thing...though have to say an acutal complete story would be pretty dandy right about now...

You're very welcome! And I don't expect anyone to post their prompt responses -- unless they want to. I just wanted to get a general idea of whether anyone was actually still using them, or if I was just talking to myself.

Sorry to hear you're struggling a bit; I know how frustrating that old block can be. You have my empathy. Don't give up.

Good luck!

L.