Just thinking about the relation between the art/craft of music and the art/craft of writing. Isn't it interesting that there's an expected warm-up for one discipline (voice included), when there's really nothing at all for writing? And even when people discuss it (i.e. 'just do free-writing'), it's seen as an optional thing rather than the usual 'warm up for 5 minutes or you'll pull something' of the other disciplines (and in this, I include sport, too). Hundreds of technical exercises for voice and guitar and piano... Nothing really for writing. It's all 'write about a spooky house' and 'describe your grandmother's garden' and all that ****. In a way, I suppose playing an instrument to any good standard is actually easier. As in, all the exercises are pre-prepared, there's an almost step-by-step path, loads of little trills and techniques to master and practise. In some ways, I wish there was a big book on writing exercises that wasn't so randomised, and one that took you to a much higher level than the current climate's average standard. To progress at all, anyway, I think you have to come up with your own exercises (which can be all the more useful if you're trying to do things differently). Anyone have any examples of more advanced writing exercises that aren't all 'try out writing prompts' or 'remove all unnecessary words from previous work' etc.?
Writing isn't a performing art, we don't have to develop the skill of playing an instrument (including the voice) before an audience with great and well-practiced skill. Unless you consider typing the skill, in which case we practice all the time. But if you loosen up the idea a little, I guess the SPaG is a sort-of equivalent. We need to get really good at all that before we can get published. At least we did back when trad publishing meant you were really good and there was no self-publishing. We still do if we take writing seriously. Another way to look at it—in the performing arts you have to get it perfect onstage or in the moment. We have all the time we need to edit and polish before submitting the manuscript. If we were verbal storytellers it would be different. We'd need to perfect our delivery, expressions, tone of voice, body language and timing, and all the rest. But we don't have to stand on the stage or under a spotlight and tell our stories.
Back when parties were a thing, you could watch the faces in the gathering when anyone gets up to sing, ready to join in and help with the high notes. A great laugh indeed. Watch the same faces when someone gets up to read a poem they've written.
I'll make this my daily post-in-need-of-a-diet. It's my corpulent child. I feed it nothing but butter. METHOD 1 There's the obvious "take this mess and fix it" exercise. Amazon's "Read Now" is a good method for that because you only need a paragraph, and you can get those for free there from some truly terrible books. I do that all the time. It makes me a ruthless editor. The logic being that eventually stupid phrasings don't even find their way onto my pages. Well, certain ones anyway. You never truly break free. It's like a dog that breaks out of the house but can't escape from the backyard. METHOD 2 The classic 19th-century exercise isn't really even writing; it's memorizing. It's the opposite of the above. Take a paragraph, stretch of dialog, etc. that's perfect and learn it word for word. When it's within you, it becomes a part of you. You absorb the structures, tone, voice, everything really. See if you can write it down. That method does work. No one wants to do it anymore though. It's too rigorous for most people. It's painful. There's this attitude that we can't learn by imitating another author, but that's how every one of us learned language. We didn't pick up a book a rules (literally, the "grammar"). We copied Mom and Dad, right down to the accent. It isn't cheating and it isn't a weakness. You'll still be you. METHOD 3 A related exercise is to rewrite a page in longhand. Because you're writing slowly, you'll see the paragraph's assembly with more clarity. It's a good starting exercise before you start memorizing. I've seen this recommended in many books. METHOD 4 Read books on grammar and rhetoric, just as a refresher. That delineates structures. It's the jazz equivalent of being able to comp a standard and knowing theory. You understand the parts so well that you can assemble them extemporaneously. It keeps you from hesitating when you write. This is also painful and no fun. Kind of like practicing those scales and arpeggios in every key, suffering through chord progressions and modulations. METHOD 5 Fanfic is also a good exercise because the relationship among characters is already determined. You're shaping material that's familiar to you. There's a lot of nuance that doesn't need to be established, so you can write a scene with depth. METHOD 6 I've seen a new method that's rather nonfictional * in nature. It's more suited to essays, but I'm very impressed with it. It does some strange things. Take a paragraph that's already written and try to casually memorize it in just one pass. Pay close attention to how its phrased. Then cheat and pull out three key fragments from each sentence. Put the original paragraph away and try to write it yourself. You must use every fragment. (You're allowed to see the fragments.) You must add your own material to complete it. New ideas are okay, but don't stray too far. What you end up with will be some variation of the original. I know it sounds trite, but you finish with really unique results. It's a method that's meant for middle and high schoolers, and not so much for fiction, but I wouldn't discount it. It's a very encouraging method. I think it gives a kid (or anyone) confidence when they see their own ideas appear. There's more to it than that. The method also looks at sentence forms and requires you to use certain ones. I forget the specifics though, sorry. It was basically an exercise in coherence/cohesion. You're stealing the coherence from a finished paragraph. You're varying sentence structures and striving for a personalized cohesion. METHOD 7 There're scene exercises where you take an excellent movie and list all of the scenes and their order and purpose. That's teaching scene organization. You can do it with books too. Seven's a magical place to end. There's lots more exercises. I'd have to look in my books. It's funny. The 20th-century approach shifted to teaching through rules, and writers have come around to shunning that. Personally, I think there is great value in learning style and rhetoric. It fills in important gaps. Just don't rely on it. So now the boilerplate advice is "read a book." But that doesn't involve rigor. You have to read with a certain eye. The old learning methods also wanted you to read a book, but they were still rigorous in their approach. I think you have to get back to rigor. I don't think free-writing is rigorous. You're just spouting what you already know, spinning your wheels in the muck of your old technique. You want to hone your skills, not simply demonstrate where they're lacking. You have to be humble enough to go to the masters. (* I didn't think that was a word. I guess it is.) << tldr: There's no "too long didn't read." You skipped my rambling entirely and saved lots of time! >>
Great ideas. I really love Methods 2 and 3. Exactly! The free-writing/journaling idea always seemed to be too generalised to me. Like, I could do as much free-writing as I want, the fact is if I don't even try and improve, or if I drift along without rigor -- the advice 'just write!' comes to mind -- I will never get to the standard I'm looking for. Speaking of exercises, etc., I found a character questionnaire by Marcel Proust where the aim was to disguise your answer (so that it could be any character within the story, to examine the structural similarities and differences between them all), so I tried it today and it turns out that one of my characters is actually extremely religious -- if you replace religion with art, he's your guy. I suppose the difference was that the questions weren't all 'what's your favourite colour' etc.
The 19th century was the last gasp for that kind of education, or at least when it began petering out. It started in ancient Rome, and is still carried on today in the method known as the Trivium. I'm studying parts of it and highly recommend it to anyone who wants to really supercharge their abilities at many elements of writing. I've seen it said this is the method that educated the greatest thinkers and speakers in history, and was responsible for their excellence and rigor. Here's a blog post I did about it: Getting back to the basics of Grammar and Composition. Not to be a party pooper, but I would say these exercises are not the same as practicing scales—which is aimed at developing facility in performance—but more akin to learning how to read and write music and compose it. Freewriting isn't really the same kind of exercise—it's more to get you unstuck if you're suffering from creative blockage and to generate ideas. I use a spectrum of Freewrite techniques. In fact I almost never do the strictly off the top of the head stuff unless I'm having trouble generating ideas or getting my flow on. Most of the time I just write my ideas without worrying about structure or anything, just to get them down. Then you can work with them. If you stress over writing it correctly or already having the proper story structure in it or whatever, that will stop you in your tracks. Just throw it down in rough form and worry about refining by stages later.
Yeah, I've got the Sister Miriam book on the Trivium and lots of books on rhetoric. I agree 100% with your approach. I do pretty much the same thing. There's some essence of these old methods that shouldn't be ignored. I mean, still, read a ton, the old masters and the new masters of your genre, but never, never forget those old 19th century techniques. There's a purity to them that will work if you let it. (edit: I realize the Trivium is Greek and not from the 19th century, but that's when it faded from modern education)
That's the one I started on, but I wanted something more like an actual course, with exercises and tests etc, so I did some searching and ended up buying homeschooling material from Memoria Press, one of many offering similar courses. Before I went to that extent I was thinking about creating my own course from the Sister Miriam book, but realized creating my own curriculum would take ages, and I wanted to concentrate on learning grammar and composition instead. So it was worth it to me to shell out for the study materials.
Totally different thing with the scales. At least for me (guitarist), that's all about loosening muscles and syncing my left hand with my right (I usually play eighths ascending and triplets descending to get the muscle memory warmed up). I wish there were an equivalent for writing. Make my life much easier.
Lol, given that scales are a physical thing, I'd suppose the only real writing equivalent is either a keyboarding class or handwriting practice. For the longest time I've believed that all writing comes ultimately from poetry. Poetry being defined (by me) as "to say without saying." Meaning you use words to create an idea in the head of your reader that goes beyond the literal meaning of the words you used. Like, that whole, "for sale: one pair of baby shoes, never used." You could practice poetry by trying to write alternate ways of describing an object or place, or practice trying to write something sad without saying "he felt sad" or "she cried" or something like that. One of the best examples of this kind of writing is the song Friends in Low Places by Garth Brooks. It's a song about a redneck guy who crashes his ex's high society party because he's not really over her. At no point does the song say anything that I wrote in the last sentence, but we know what the song is about anyway because Garth talks his way around the subject. So like, that could be a thing. Yeah, I agree that most writing prompts are silly. Especially the ones that go, "what if you were ___?" or "Describe your ___." Um, most writers don't write directly about themselves. A better writing prompt is more external, but can never be truly good because it's not specific to the writer. I would argue that maybe creating writing prompts is a better exercise than using them.
Practicing things like scales is all about getting you comfortable with notes. I would say the same of reading and any kind of writing (including free writing). The idea is that it can improve our relationship with the written word and better prepare us to use it effectively. I don't read any special way. I honestly don't even know what that means. I read because I love it. I devour stories and from such certain things like structure, showing vs. telling, pacing and even grammar are engrained in me by not much more than the examples in books. I've got a good exercise. I've mentioned this one on the forum before, but I don't know if anyone's tried it. Write a short story using only one-syllable words. It can be about anything and length doesn't matter. Just have a clear beginning, middle and end comprised solely of one-syllable words. make sure you go through it and revise any place you may have slipped up. This exercise seemed to instantly change my relationship with words and word choice. It also creates a rhythm and moving forward I was more aware of the rhythm or breaks in rhythm as a result of my word choices. This one is worth a try, I believe. The thing is writing improves writing. You can put whatever stipulations you want on it. Writing will always be better than not writing. Free writing allows us to try new things and whether they work or not we can always learn something. I have found that it takes a lot of practice to reach the level I want. Most of the writing we do is practice because isn't basically everything practice that doesn't get published? If you want something similar to practicing scales try some of the challenging forms of poetry. I'm pretty good at writing sestinas. Not that my sestinas are that great, but I can do them correctly and I have improved over time. Still, I'm not looking to be a poet just improve my relationship with language. That, I believe it has done.
To get better at something, you need to challenge your weaknesses. Although you can also be a great writer with limitations - Dostoevsky and Kafka come to mind as writers who were limited but had ideas of such resonance it did not matter. But I don't think free-writing is skill-building. It's a bit like a basketball player dribbling back and forth all day. It's not helping them get better though arguably still has some benefits. The first thing you need to do is identify your weaknesses. Are you bad at telling? Write a scene that introduces a character's back story with no telling. Are you bad at sense of place? Practice sensory descriptions. Maybe you aren't generating enough ideas. Sit for an hour and brainstorm as many different ideas as possible for stories. If you have problems with the framework of storytelling, choose your good ideas and write out a series of events that will happen. If you have no idea what a good story is, read one you like and break the story down. What happens in the first paragraph and the next paragraph etc...? How would you break this story down? These are all examples of practicing the writing scales for me. They are not passive acts or easy things to do - they require focus and a need for a writer to push themselves. The hardest part for many is to identify their weaknesses, since this requires self-criticism. The second most difficult thing is to act on those weak points, since this requires discipline and effort. The third most difficult thing is to do this consistently, since we then have to again and again deny ourselves pleasure in order to get better at writing. It's an arduous task to get good at anything, no doubt about that.
This "write a short story using only one-syllable word(s)" is something I'm going to try. Many, many years ago I tried it and helped. Going back to basics is what I'll need to start over again Thank you for sharing
hm. warm ups i use. they're different depending on whether i'm drafting, editing, or preparing. A few minutes with the book I *want* influencing me, if I happen to have one. if there's a particular attitude or feeling I want in the story I'm writing, then fifteen minutes of reading that book, preferably out loud, can be a useful exercise. Sometimes I will copy a page of the book, usually longhand into a journal, because the prose felt like something worth learning was in it. going back in my manuscript to read the scene i wrote yesterday. it helps me get back into the headspace and the rhythm of whatever I'm telling. freewriting. in the morning when I get up i will often turn my computer to a blank page and just start complaining. I didn't sleep well. i screwed up making my coffee. I don't want to start writing the next part of the story, because while I know what happens, I don't know how it starts. and now i start asking questions on the page. what does happen? what's important about it? what is especially beautiful or horrible about it? what emotional key changes am i making in the scene? what does it mean? what would make a good opening image? as for writing exercises to expand the technical abilities of your prose, i suggest Steering The Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin.
