Writing Exercises: advice column plot

Ok, apparently I'm not all that busy, so here's a random writing exercise that I used to use a lot: write a letter to an advice column in the voice of a character in a story you are working on. Have the character summarize his/her concerns at the midpoint in the story.

This is a bit of a specific exercise. When I was last posting writing exercises, most of those were geared towards or at least open to creating an entirely new piece, and that really won't work with this one (I would be very impressed to see an entire short-story in the form of an advice column letter; it could be done [I once read a good one that was entirely in blog comments] but it wouldn't be easy).

This one works when you are in the middle of writing something and feel stuck (stories are of course the only thing I've tried it with; wonder if a novelist could use it?) It also needs to be a piece that's fairly plot- and character-driven--otherwise, it will be a very boring letter and not really shed a lot of light on the story itself.

I find this helpful in stories where I feel like I've lost my bead on a character's motivation, and/or can't quite guess what that person would do next because I don't know what they want. This exercise can fix that because it concentrates not on what is *actually happening in the story* but how the character sees that stuff.

Whether it's first or third person, the characters still know a lot less than the author, unless the characters is static, omniscient Mary Sue who doesn't grow or change at all in the story because he/she is already perfect. Ahem.

It is really useful to lay out exactly how a character sees the world, and what they see as going wrong. This is especially useful to do with minor characters; I often find I know exactly what the central folks are up to, but not at all how the surrounding characters will understand the situation or react to it, what lies they believe, what information they've missed or ignored. And I like to know all this--even if someone is only on the story-stage for a couple paragraphs, I'd like them to be realistic and human there, not a prop or a piece of the scenery.

I probably won't post an example of this one because, I said, boring! But I do find this so useful to do, even if only in your brain.

RR

Writing Exercise: Questions Game: RR's response

(This answers an earlier post.)

Facing Kate, Sarah felt the same déjà vu she always feels. The two girls were the exact same height, and their shoulders are the same width across.

“What are you doing, Sarah?”

Sarah struggled for a long moment with that, before lying back down on the floor again, so that it would be obvious. She put her head a bit farther from the toilet this time, but she could still feel damp creeping through her hairnet and hair. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

Kate inhaled as if she were about to blow up a balloon. “And this is supposed to accomplish what, exactly?”

From the floor, Kate looked enormously tall. Sarah thought this was more appropriate, really; Kate’s personality was much taller than hers. “Why would I want to accomplish anything?”

“Yeah, why would you?” Kate plummeted abruptly down, her legs accordianing under her until she was crossed-legged beside Sarah’s wet head. “Why try to keep your job, or your dignity, or even your clothes clean? Why not just give up on anything that’s fucking adult, and go cry like a little kid?”

Sarah slurped snot up her nose and tried to breathe evenly. She stared at the domed light fixture on the ceiling—clean, but with dozens of dead-fly bodies in the nipple of it. When she turned to look at Kate, Kate’s small watery blue eyes were trained right on Sarah’s forehead, like gun sights.

“Is it my turn to talk now?” Sarah said weakly.

“Do you want it to be? Do you have anything to say?”

“Why don’t you just speak for me, say whatever you think I should say? What would say right now, Kate, if you’d just lost it in front of a customer and were lying here in a puddle of maybe pee, and the only reason you hadn’t been fired yet is that Darin is scared to come in the ladies room?”

Kate flinched and peered more deeply at Sarah’s face, before flattening down onto her stomach beside her, so their elbows touched. “Do you really think he’ll fire you?”

“Why wouldn’t he? How much of an asset to the team am I, really?” Sarah had meant to say it with all the grim bravado Kate would have brought to such a damning self-assessment, but the truth of her own uselessness hit her hard in the stomach midway through asset, and the rest of the words were watery with tears. “What use am I at all?”

Kate’s eyes narrowed even more, pale slits with the light of the fluorescent tube reflecting in them. “Can’t you just…just…get it together?”

Sarah tried for another deep breath but there was the weight of a sob resting on her lungs and she didn’t get much. “No.”

***

RR thinks: this is *way* easier when you've got some narrative to play with, not just the questions themselves to build the whole scene. And I hand-picked a part of the story I was working on where evading the question makes sense. And ended with a statement. But I still used the *spirit* of the exercise, I'd say, plus I think I'll actually be able to keep most of this in the piece as it stands, which is useful.

Anybody else?

RR

Writing Exercise: Tom Stoppard's Questions Game

Sunday evening I rewatched the film version of Tom Stoppard's brilliant play Rosencrantz and Guidenstern Are Dead. Since the author directed the film, it is just as wondrous as the play.

If you've never read or viewed this one, it's the left-out lives of Hamlet's two retainers, who die off-stage and without tears or explanation towards the end of that play. It's also about the act of writing and the definition of character, the concept of performance, and a variety of physical principals and simple machines, which are explored by one of the characters in a series of subtle and hilarious protracted gags.

This is one of the funniest movies you're likely to see, but to get all the jokes, it helps to see it multiple times (I think this was my forth, and I saw a lot that was new!) One scene I did remember distinctly and with joy from childhood viewing was the great Questions game, that the protagonists play on Hamlet's indoor tennis court.

The game is what it sounds like, to keep a (semi-)logical fast-paced conversation going using only questions. The characters have rules against not only statements but repetition, non-sequiteurs, rhetoric, synonyms and hesitation. This keeps the conversation fast, intense, somewhat surreal, and very tight--people are trying to win, after all.

Stoppard's style of dialogue in general like that; the Questions game comes up almost as a kind of parody of R&G's usual quick, confused/confusing banter. This style also reminds me of Sanford Meisner's repetition exercise for actors--another way of creating fast, tight dialogue.

As a lover of fine dialogue of both real and artificial forms, needless to say, a) I love this stuff and b) it's very hard to do well, or even at all. As I said, I watched this movie as a kid, with my bro, and the first time we encountered a tennis court, we did try to play it--so frustrating! Even when you leave out some of the secondary rules about hesitation, non-sequiteurs, etc.

So, obviously, this is a great writing exercise. Obviously, you won't end up with anything quite *realistic* in the usual sense, and if realistic is what your project is, you'll have to redraft to use the exercise. But in addition to pace and rhythm, the all-questions-no-answers style brings a great deal of tension to dialogue--nothing says recalcitrant witness like answering a question with a question.

Ok, the exercise is: write a scene with two (or more, if you really want to push yourself) characters, in which all dialogue is in the form of question. Use the other rules at your discretion, or not at all. I'll post mine when I've written it. If you write one, I'd love to see it if you send me a link, post it as a comment, or send it some other way.

I'm glad I came up with this after my actual teaching term finished--I think it's gonna be really hard.

I'm a wrecking ball in a summer dress

RR

Writing Exercise: Theo & Rae, Enamouring

Riiiigghhttt...one of the good things about having a blog, as opposed to a paper diary (which I also have) is that one feels semi-accountable for the things promised one the blog, and not at all for things promised in the diary that no one reads (how's that novella coming, RR? and that ten-k?)

A little while ago, I pointed out how hard it is to write good I'm So into You dialogue, and challenged Rose-coloured readers to write some. Of course, no one did (that I know of--let me know if I'm wrong!) and I found it terribly challenging, too--but I promised to post what I wrote and so...see below.

Never let it be said that I am not a woman of my word. However, also never let it be said that I think my estimation of flirtation is the universal one. So not so.


Her hair was long then, and she’d done something to make it curl, or at least twist a bit. This was a long time ago.
“I don’t like this city.”
“Oh. Well, ok.” He flipflopped his hand on the grass. “I like it.”
“I mean, technically I don’t, when I think about it, but it’s easy to forget.” She grinned big, her lips wide of her teeth. It took him a moment to get the compliment.
“There are…distractions here, true.” He flopped backwards then, to look up into the leaves. They weren’t interesting but they were moving, so up seemed a reasonable place to rest his gaze, and he shouldn’t look at her anymore.
“It’s nice here. I’m going to stay and eat my sandwich…if that’s ok?”
“It’s ok. But here is part of Toronto, that city you don’t like.”
“No, not here, here doesn’t count. Queen’s Park is done for tourists and photoshoots and sweeping grandeur. It could be anywhere.”
“But here is where it is, Toronto made it.”
She huffed, and a crumb arched out of nowhere into his eyeline, as if he were alone, landed on his chest. Her hand brushed past his left nipple and plucked it off. “Oh, god, sorry.”
“Sall right.” He hadn’t heard her chewing.
“So, what’s good about Toronto, then?”
“You don’t think there’s anything good? Not one thing, after three days?”
“Five. I’ve been here five days. I existed before I met you, you know.”
“Must’ve been hell.”
She laughed lightly; her voice was alto but her laugh soprano. More crumbs. “Shit, shit. So gross. Sorry.”
He sat up and brushed at his chest. Her hair was in her face and she was trying to brush at him too and he caught her fingers.
“What are you eating?”
She held up a white bun half unwrapped from its plastic. Along the bitten side was a line of meaty paste, onions, red sauce. “I got it for a dollar, in Chinatown. But I don’t think it’s Chinese.”
“It’s Vietnamese, it’s a Saigon sub. Some people won’t eat them because they don’t know what kind of meat that is.”
“Do you know?” Her eyelashes dipped. He didn’t think she wore mascara. He would’ve liked to touch them to be sure.
“Eat them? Sure.”
“No, know what kind…”
“Oh, no.”
She shrugged, bit, chewed. “I’m sure it’s food. It tastes good. It was only a dollar.”
He leaned back on one elbow, sort of lounging by her knees like a Shakesphearian swain. “I think I love you.”
She shut her eyes, lashes flat on skin. “Don’t be silly.”
“I’m not. I’m hungry. Share?”
She looked at the sandwich, back at his face. “Germs?”
“You spat all over my chest.”
“Well, you didn’t seem to like it all that much.”
“When do you have to be back in Buffalo?”
She lay down on the grass beside him, looking up, and he lowered his head to his biceps. Her profile was his whole view.
“Not until the term starts, end of August.”
His heart leapt. “You’re a student, too?”
“No, a teacher. Grade three. Too? You’re a student.”
He flopped onto his back, leaves and pigeons and sky. Trapped by his own hopefulness, by his own stupid youth. “Going into the fourth year. Chem-eng.”
“Oh.” Soprano faintness, then the wet sound of another bite.
Fourth year was meaningless once you were past it, impressive to no one but less-than-fourth years. He took a different approach. “People are such hypocrites about germs. I’ve seen girls at clubs with their tongues down the throats of guys they met twenty minutes ago. But they make their friend buy her own bottle of water.”
“Your point?”
“Saliva is saliva. Oral intimacy is oral intimacy. Anyone you wouldn’t rule out kissing, at least for hygiene reasons, is probably safe to share your sandwich with.”
She lay there, the saran-wrapped sandwich resting on the poppy-print of her left breast. “You’re making this very monumental.”
“I’m trying to say that it’s not monumental. It doesn’t matter.”
“I’d rather it mattered. Kissing usually does to chicks. You should know that, in fourth year.”
He tipped his head back, grating skull against dry earth. “It does matter a little. Just…not monumentally.”
The sandwich hove into view between his face and the sky and pigeons, the smell of salty meat and sweetened bread. He said, “For Saigon subs alone, you could stay in Toronto. You have to admit, they could be worth it.”
Her voice, so throaty thick, “For almost anything, I think I could stay.” The bread and meat slipped closer through the sky, closer, right into his mouth.


Shake it like a latitude sun
RR

Writing Exercise: Romantic Traffic

I'm reading reading reading student stories this week, and they are *good*! I'm exhausted, but intrigued, and thrilled by all I'm learning (and, sigh, wishing I'd emphasized how dialogue tags worked a little better). One thing I'm learning is that kids write the storylines everyone else does, and they care about what everyone else cares about--a lot of these are love stories, and even the ones that aren't have love interests in them. They aren't getting every detail of how grown-ups couple *quite* accurately, but actually, they aren't that bad, probably because things actually *don't* change that much, post-high-school.

One thing they all seem to know, and to relate with such consistency that I'm worried that they actually heard it in a Guidance class (better than my Guidance class, which mainly taught us about chlamydia) is that if someone is right for you, it's easy to talk to them. I've seen over and over, "the conversation was so easy and natural," "they could tell each other anything," "they talked about everything as if they had known each other forever." I, of course, am writing in the margin, "I'd love to read this conversation," "Would be nice to read what they say," "Show a bit of this!!"

Show, don't tell, central tenet of creative writing classes everywhere. And really, what's more fun than flirtation? Why *don't* they want to write about it? As soon as that thought strikes, it becomes pretty obvious--because it's *hard* to write that stuff, or at least hard to do well, so that a reader can feel the frisson that the characters are supposed to be feeling.

Think about the last time your own companion went to the bathroom in a restaurant and left you eavesdropping on the couple at the next table (I'm not even going to pretend there are people in the world who don't listen). So often, they're enjoying each other, charmed and delighted and intrigued by each new comment and insight, and I'm...a little bored? Happy for them, of course, but not really getting it when he simpers, "Wow, that's so right, what you told that prick. I'm so proud of you," or she squawks, "Oh, my god, that's the funniest thing I ever heard. Hah ha HAH!"

Flirting can be pretty inane if you aren't a participant, and even when people are "confiding their deepest secrets" it might not roll along punchily; one girl's deepest secret is another's boring angst.

So how do you write romantic banter that people will actually want to read? Obviously, it's been done, but it's hard!! I've been working on it for a while now!

So today's exercise is--one "I'm so into you" conversation that is neither dull nor nauseating. Situate it at any point in the relationship's trajectory that works for the characters: meet cute, first date, post-coital, whatever. Just make'em like each other, and make that charm evident to the reader. I'll post mine when I manage to write it. This is really harder than it sounds, even if you aren't 15.

She'd already taken all of the dye out of her hair
RR

Writing exercises: how to get over yourself

I spent today running three workshops with 30 kids each--I can barely hold my head up, but the experience was amazing, and in a few cases I was genuinely excited about the promise of more work by these kids. The interesting thing about most of my students, and I'd have to gender-stereotype here and say especially the boys, is that they are in no danger of taking themselves too seriously. They don't draft and they don't fret; if it's not good the first time, well, then it's not going to be good. An amazing proportion of the work *is* good, that's the startling thing, which speaks to a) natural talent and b) the power of egoless writing.

It's harder for an adult to write without hoping to impress someone, even ourselves. We aim for perfection, truth and posterity, and are crestfallen when we just obtain accurate interesting prose. Not that a little truth and perfection isn't a lovely thing, but writing fast and furious, without wondering, "But is it *beautiful*?" can often show a writer just what he or she is capable of.

Here's a couple exercises given to me a few years back by my wonderous mentor, Leon Rooke. I had a bit more free time back then, but I'd still recommend doing these if you have a free weekend. They're fun and low-pressure, if a lot of work. I'll bet you'll be as surprised as I was at how much good material you produce. Lots of nonsense, too, but you can't make a cake without breaking some eggs.

1) Write 20 opening paragraphs. Go from one to the next if you can, and don't follow up on any of them until you've got all 20 down. Use as many different voices, tenses, tones and styles as you can.

2) Write 3 stories in 3 days. I guess this one would take a long weekend, or you could space 3 days apart. But only 24 hours allotted to each story, which means you probably can't revise at all on this draft. Which is ok. Really. I promise. Unlike the whippersnappers, I won't check your work.

And now I have to go, because the funny thing is, *I'm* being workshopped tonight. It's a theme day. And so, I must make pizza.

Sweet summer all around
RR

My Plot Variant Exercise

Three different plot variations inspired by this scenario--woman attempts to step into crosswalk, man jogs a few steps to catch up from behind her and grabs her arm to pull her back.

#1.
Her foot was almost off the sidewalk, when he cupped his palm around her elbow when and somehow managed to yank her back. His heart pounded, but not much, it had been so quick. He saw the dumptruck turn left into the condo construction lot before she turned on him.

"The hell? What do you want?"

"You were about to walk right in front of that truck. I just—”

"It turned. It was turning."

"But I didn't know, it was coming straight—”

"It signalled."

He drew himself up a little, still under her hairlines. "It's never safe to jaywalk, you know."

#2.
Tentatively, he jabbed her arm as she was about to step off the kerb. Pushy, yes, but he just had to see if it was Sienna. Sienna, after all these years, the same silky hazelnut hair down her back...

She turned, a faceful of freckles under wide Britney sunglasses, a tiny mischief mouth. Not Sienna.

"Oh, sorry, I thought I knew you from—”

"Do we?" Underneath the big lavender lenses, her eyebrows scrunched.

"No, I'm sorry, I—”

The brows unscrunched, popped back over the tops of the glasses. "Yes, from the gym, of course."

He startled, took a step back. Did she go to his gym? He didn't look at people very closely there, mainly--certainly no eye-contact. "Is it that?"

"Of course!" She flapped her hands, yanking shopping bags up and down. "The free-weights hog, from—”

"Well, I don't really hog them. I just use a range...." He grinned.

"Yeah, you do." She grinned back. "Everyone at Bally's knows about you."

A taxi whizzed by, windows crowded with heads.

"Bally's?"

She nodded, still smiling.

"I guess you've...ah, got the wrong guy. I go to Trainers."

Her smile fumbled, eyebrows reclenched. "Trainers?"

"On, ah. Bathurst. Good gym."

She stared.

"Just a case of...mistaken identity. I guess." And, not knowing what else to do, he brushed past her into the crosswalk.

#3.
He couldn't believe it when the white "Walk" man appeared and she actually turned to go.

"Wait," he said but her shoulders continued to twist as if she would not wait, and his hand shot out to snatch her elbow.

She spun, silk hair flowing away from her shell ears, so lovely. Her eyes were wide on his face. Her mouth of opened pink, but she didn't say anything.

"I just—so, we're broken up, then?"

"Broken...? Were we-- It was just a coffee, David, a couple of times. We were never--"

"It was, Aisha...something. To me. I felt, with you, I felt--- God, you're amazing, you know that? You don't even know that, do you?"

"David, I don't want--"

"I think I could impress you, Aisha. When I think of how I feel about you, I think I could be impressive. I could do anything."

"David, I'm sorry--"

"Aisha, would you listen? You don't listen."

"David!"

He looked down and saw his hand still on her arm, his fingertips digging white bloodless dents into her honey skin.



When your home is your headstone
RR

Writing Exercises: The Plot-Variant One

Try this: next time you see a stranger or strangers doing something interesting, take the image home (in your mind; I think strangers don't like it when you photograph them) and write a little mini-story about what's going on, how it came to occur and/or what happened next. Then write another that has nothing to do with the characters and situation of the first, but still explains the scenario. Then another. Do as many as you feel like, but three is a good number to break you loose from that sense that a good idea is good for one thing only.

If you are low on interesting strangers in your life, you can have some of mine:
--teenaged boy talking on cell-phone, teenaged girl berating him and is ignored. Finally, she kicks him in the shins.
--woman attempts to step into crosswalk, man jogs a few steps to catch up from behind her and grabs her arm to pull her back
--extremely attractive young couple in restaurant, talking extremely loudly. Man congratulates woman repeatedly on "respecting herself" and "standing up for hereself"
--middle-aged couple in Bulk Barn, puzzled and argumentative over selection of popcorn-shaker flavours


Writing exercises just sort of float in the ether and there are a million different versions of everything, but I suppose I should be giving credit to where I've found'em. This exercise adapted from one in the (very good) book What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter (and the strangers, for good or ill, are my own). The last one is one I made up, and the one before that was originally given to me by my very first (and brilliant) writing teacher, Pam North.

Enjoy! I'll post my version in few days!

The lights are on and the party's over
RR

Character Exercise: Holiday Letter Inspired by Personal Ad

Dearest Friends and Family,

Well, it's that time of year again--the lights, the hugs, the presents, and all those spinning spinning dreidels: it's Hannukah!

Just kidding! Of course, I am as Christian as a candidate for American public office, and now that Adrienne Goldberg is no longer in my life, I haven't the slightest need to light a candle during the month of Kislev. As I string the lights and tinsel from fridge to coat-stand and back again, I am sending all my friends and family out in the great white north my sincerest good wishes for merriment at this merry time.

What's this, you are wondering? Why kill perfectly good trees with this silly letter, Trevor, you might be asking, when you will be home among us, wishing us Merry Christmas in person while attending the Satelliteberg Elementary Festive Singalong and eating your weight in buttertarts at Aunt Sally's Advent party and falling asleep at the pre-dawn prayer gathering!

Sadly, I won't make it this year, my dearest friends and family. It's been a tough year--I don't like to complain, but managing a hedge fund has gotten a lot less glamourous in the past few months. After the layoffs, you'd think I would have been left with a good deal of free time, but with the class-action suit along with the divorce proceedings finally proceeding, I wound up spending most of my days with lawyers, and my nights in an Manischewitz-wine-soaked despair.

Kidding! Although you know my endless regard for Adrienne hasn't ended, I abide by her report that we "want different things"! Although I don't even know what that means! From what I can see across the arbitration table, we're still both putting non-dairy creamer in our caffeinated beverages when the milk is in pitchers, because that little Kosher "u" just makes us feel better. And when, during our extremely pleasant smalltalk while one of the lawyers is in the restroom, Adrienne mentions a tv show she has enjoyed, it's almost always one I've enjoyed too, or else one I was just about to rent the complete DVD collection of.

So don't buy me any DVDs for Christmas this year, I've seen almost everything in an effort to have something new to present at arbitration smalltalk! Also, they might get busted in the mail. Please just don't worry about it!

I know, I know, you might think that the end of a six-year marriage and a brilliant career would be an excellent time for the warm embrace of high-school classmates and second cousins, for the comforting tones of my mother asking if I knew all along there was something wrong with a marriage in a synagogue and that's why we never had kids?

Oh, mom, I love you! But I'm bound and determined to spend the holidays and the remains of my savings on a trip to Israel to finally see where Adrienne's people came from--I figure it's the least I can do for the woman I spent the best years of my life with. And I know what you are thinking, Laurence, that Adrienne's people were from Newark, which means there's no reason to go where they are firing bombs and don't even speak English instead of where the beer is cheap and G-d smiles on our OHL team, and yes, but you know what I mean, you big anti-Semitic galoot!

But I really think that this embrace of the Chosen People is an excellent way to illustrate to Adrienne how very much she is my chosen person. I also think that those of you who have chosen to keep her in your hearts and in the family by sending cards and letters are doing *almost* the right thing. However, I know from personal experience in the arbitration room that, now that we are no longer wed (legal as of this morning) she would rather not receive explicitly Christian images in the mail, such as creches, angels, or the seasonally inappropriate cruxifiction scene you sent, Laurence--nice, really nice.

So, without further ado, I'm off on my Birthright tour (if they contact any of you, please be discreet about any small fudgings of the truth of my "birthright"!) Should you miss me enough to want to send gifts, you could give instead to the local Jewish Community Centre. Hah! Of course there is no Jewish Community Centre in Satelliteberg, or even any Jews since the Weinbergers got into that tiff about prayer in school (I'll finally weigh in on this one: yes, I think grace *is* technically a prayer) and lobbied the county to move the town line so that the family now lives in Burrsbury.

If you are still inclined towards gifting, perhaps you could forward your cheques to one of the fine Jewish organizations in Newark, New Jersey.

I'll send postcards from the Wailing Wall.

Love,
Trevor

(This wound up having very very little to do with the poor guy whose personal ad I used, and I will *not* be linking to it. He was, I think, quite a catch, and this sort of nonsense would not be helpful to him or his pursuit of happiness.)

Writing Exercises: Newspaper Character Sketches

Using a daily newspaper (or internet variants thereof), do any or all of the following:

--write a typical day's schedule for one of the letters-to-the-editor writers
--write a resume for a baby listed on the Births page, 30 years in the future
--write a holiday-greeting letter for one of the people listed in the Personals/Matchmakers pages
--write a Facebook profile for someone who posted one of the classifieds under "Misc."

I'll post whatever I come up with for this exercise in a couple days!

I don't know if you drive / if you love the ground beneath you
RR

One-Moment Exercise--Results

(10 minute freewrite on the prompt in the last post, unedited)

He’s still tasting the goddamn date square. It’s been over an hour and some fierce regret, but it still pastes his tongue, his gums above his wisdom teeth. He is dying for a sip of water, has been for a while, but he didn’t dare take a finger off the wheel with Iz watching, and the rental-car office is so tiny and wobbly looking it seems like it might not even have running water. Plus, every time the clerk looks up from the computer, the file, the computer, he is glaring at them. At them both, but Judge feels like the kid can sense it was Judge behind the wheel when they hit the median, though he wouldn’t go as far to say “at fault.” Judge wouldn’t go that far at all.

It’s hot in Ohio. It was hot in Ontario too, but in that province it was also dawn, which gave your clothes some clearance from your body. Now everything is slicked tight, even the baggy canvas of his shorts, even the thin cotton of the street-stand t-shirt that says, Fest. It is a generic t-shirt, bought for four-dollars in Outremont when he spilled red wine at a party and ran downstairs to see if he could by a new one. For four dollars, he didn’t care what fest, all though here, in Ohio, with the rubber-decal letters sweating to the hair on his chest, he panics briefly that someone might ask him. Not Iz, of course; Iz was at the party.

She also smells like date squares, which is not helping anything, the cinnamon-fruit dust that hangs in the shared air between them. And she stands so distant from him, while firmly occupying the same wicket at the wood-veneer desk. She is keeping her distance? Or she is trying not to touch in the confined space where to touch means to stick, and sweat.

Why is the clerk not sweating? How can a modern business establishment not be air-conditioned? What is wrong with Ohio? The shallow bowls around the kid’s eyes are not even shiny, his forehead dry, his tight small braids tapering neatly to the back of his neck. The clicks of the computer are dry and precise, too, but in Judge’s mind, each one is thousands of dollars.

Exercise--The Single Moment One

Wednesday evening I went to the info session/meeting/dinner for me and my writing/teaching/administrating colleagues at SWAT/Now Hear This. It was very exciting/friendly/delicious/scary, because very very soon, I'm going to be entrusted with some actual high-school students, and expected to teach them something, and that will likely be every adjective mentioned above (except delicious).

In an effort to calm down, I will of course be over-preparing. I have a wealth of classroom experience from the other side, because I have had so many good writing teachers the past 11 years or so. So I will be culling through memories and notebooks, trying to find what helped me most. I'll also be asking around to find such things that helped *other* writers--if you have recommendations or fond memories (or, in fact, bitter memories that you would like me avert for future generations) please drop me a line/comment.

I actually used to love writing exercises, and find they work well in a classroom, where everyone's used to obeying orders, and it's tough to order anyone to "think freely." Exercises are a trick to free you up in tight parameters, and to that end, usually they are timed. I prefer 10 minutes for the ones I'll be running, but if you are playing along at home, obviously I won't be checking your work!!

Single-Moment Exercise
Describe a single moment in the life of a character. It could be someone in a piece you've been working on and got stuck in, or someone you just invented clean out of your head. If you are really stuck, use yourself, right now. Describe all five senses as the character is experiencing them: the taste in her mouth, the feel of his clothes, temperature, comfort-level, smells, feeling of health or illness, what's in her field of vision/aural landscape, and of course what's on his mind. Do not move forward into ramifications--these are unknown--and try to stay away from flashback unless the character is dwelling on the past. Stick to immediate perception as much as possible.
Ok, go!
I'll put up my exericse on the weekend, in case anyone's curious.

Outside the thunder's jealous / of the way you shake
RR