Thank you!
Here are little exercises that you can do every day to help you become better at writing. Trust me, these do take a toll on how you write. You'll notice a difference! Thank you Lauren for giving me these helpful tips! They are simply amazing and so are you!
Numbers 1-4 were created by Lauren and exercises after that are ones that I've learned from various classes.
Exercise One:
I would like you to go about your day and notice everything. If you see a picture, I want you to notice individual lines and colors. I want you to see things in parts and be describing them in your head. I want you to look at your family and friends and think how you would describe them to somebody that would never see them, but wants to know what they look like. You'll find that it will help get your detail better if you go even one day like this.
Exercise Two:
I would like you to only see the object or person as a whole, not the individual details. This assignment will help you to only pick out the details that are necessary. Remember, once you do both of these, that there is a golden mean between the two. Too many details bog down a story, but too few make it into a children book.
Exercise Three:
The next phase is to become the character. I acted in my youth for a long time, and by now, I can become a character at will. You need to be able to answer each of these questions exactly like your characters would answer it.
Questions:
Where were you born?
What type of family did you live in?
Who was your hero?
Who was your best friend?
What sort of person are you? (their description, remember!)
How would you react to ______ doing ________? (subsitute a name and an action)
What relationships to you have with ____?
Why did you become the person you are?
And lastly, nearing the end of a story, how have you changed to accommodate __________?
These questions are just a few of the many questions you could ask, but these will suffice to create a 'rounded' character that can change with they story.
Exercise Four:
This one is an exercise that I will fully explain in a moment. I would actually like you to take your five favorite songs and look up the lyrics on a couple different websites. I don't care which websites you pick, but look for different interpretations and variations in the lyrics. Once you have done that, look at how the difference in the word changed the meaning of that stanza or line.
The reason I would like you to do this is to get a feel for how a small change of word can change the feel of a song or sentence. For instance, if one wanted to write a creepy sentence that set the reader on edge, and it was raining, instead of saying "The raindrops slid down into my jacket, wetting the back of my neck." you could say something along the lines of "The raindrops left little wet trails, like those of slugs, as they slithered down into the depths of my jacket."
Exercise Five:
Pick out three of your favorite books. Take the first book, open it randomly, pick out one sentence from the page and write it down at the top of your paper. For five straight minutes, add onto that one sentence with anything that comes to your mind. Make up a short fiction and don't stop writing until the five minutes are up. This helps you clear up your mind from any writers block there may be. When you feel that you can't write about your chosen topic, do this exercise to help clear out your mind. Writers block is hard to get rid of when you're thinking about it. Thinking about it too much causes even more frustration and more writers block. Forcing yourself to write is a bad choice, so instead, try writing about a whole new topic.
When your five minutes are up, stop, and pick up the second book. Repeat the steps from the first book and continue on with the third book after that. Once you've written three short fictions, go back and read them over. It's interesting to see what you need to work on and how you can improve.