Session 8: Exercise

At our last meet-up, Jerome talked about the role of magic in a story, and how all magic must come at a cost.

With that in mind, try his exercise before our next meeting on July 21:


Pick anything that could be the cost of your magic ...
e.g. What if the cost of casting a spell is a loss of air around the person casting the spell? What if you lose some hair when you use magic?

Now think about all aspects of that, and how this tension/friction will inevitably impact on the society's infrastructure, its culture, its religions, the world around the characters, the way those at either extreme would be treated, and so-on.

Session 7: Exercise

Here is a 'diagnostic' exercise to complete in time for Session 8:

This is a continuation on from our discussion about being able to discern 'opinion' (or 'personality') from 'description', in order to be able to observe how the narrative voice may be biased.

Select a paragraph of your own text (can be fiction or non fiction), and go through it, highlighting only the bits that aren't opinion or embellishment, but are the bare bones of description about what is happening.

Now go through and look for words that are embellishments, and you'll see that these are either unconscious (the writer doesn't realise they're offering their POV) or intentional (the writer is using the bias in order to give the narrator a personality or an unreliability, perhaps).

You should be able to start building a picture of how the writer is positioning the narrative voice.

Example from Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 1.

Bold is bare bones.
Green is opinion or example of how the words chosen exhibit personality.
Orange is assumption.

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them. They're quite touchy about anything like that, especially my father. They're nice and all — I'm not saying that — but they're also touchy as hell. Besides, I'm not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything. I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy.

You'll see the narrative voice is being built up as an 'unreliable' narrator. We can see he is probably young (colourful, colloquial language), has opinions, makes assumptions, and has perhaps even had (or likes to say he's had!) a breakdown.

Which all adds up to a unique Point of View!

Session 6: Exercise

This is an exercise in preparation for Session 7, when we will be discussing Point of View (POV).

Write the same short scene (half a page is fine) from 3 different points of view.

Session 5: Exercise

Here is an exercise for you to complete in time for Session 6 (April 21):

We've covered main character wants and needs. Now consider those of your villain/antagonist. What does he/she/it* want more than anything? And what is standing in his/her/its way?

Bonus round: As you look at your main character's and villain's desires and motivations, where do they intersect? Are they ever the same? Is you main character the biggest obstacle to your villain, and vice versa?

*If indeed the primary antagonist in your work is an "it" (cancer, a rogue wave, amnesia), think in those terms! What do these things do? And what might interrupt them from completing their natural courses of action?

Session 4: Exercise

Here is an exercise for you to complete in time for Session 5:

As a refresher, what does your main character want or need more than anything? And what is he or she willing (or obligated) to give up/change in order to acquire/fulfill this thing or need?

Knowing what the main character must do or sacrifice in order to accomplish his or her goal, consider what still stands in the way of your main character succeeding in what he or she has set out to accomplish.

Session 3: Exercise

Here is an exercise for you to complete in time for Session 4.

Consider the setting of your inciting incident and what significance that location has with relation to the theme and tone of the work at large.

• Why did you pick this location? 
• When and how frequently do the characters in your work return to it? 
• How does it reflect the theme or tone of the piece?

As a warm up, try looking at these video clips of inciting incidents from popular movies and consider the above questions as they pertain to each film:
https://screencraft.org/2015/09/08/10-strong-inciting-incidents-in-screenplays/

Session 2: Exercise

Here is an exercise for you to complete in time for Session 3.

Bearing in mind the things we learned about plot and theme:

• Describe the main dramatic action AND the theme/s (‘what does it mean?’) in 5 of your favourite works of film/book. You can use the worksheet, if you like.
• Write an Elevator Pitch for your project/story in a few sentences, bearing in mind the distinction between action and theme.

Session 1: Exercise

Here is an exercise for you to complete in preparation for Session 2.

Freewriting prompts

• Sit down and write whatever comes to mind
• Write as much as you can without the letter ‘e’.
• Generate a first sentence from this website: http://writingexercises.co.uk/firstlinegenerator.php ... and then write!

Welcome!

This week marks the first of our 12-month Odyssey into the World of Writing.

As a starting point, we have a quick exercise that we're going to revisit periodically over the course of the year.

Exercise:

Write a paragraph (or page) about your obsessions.

Not only will this eventually give us some fun metrics (what did I think? how have I grown? how have my ideas clarified?) but it helps us start to become aware of ourselves and what drives us — as a person and, by extension, as a writer.