Writing Exercises for YOU

[Jackie]

Concentration: Descriptive Writing and Character Creation/Depth

Create a new character and assign a feeling to him/her. It can be love, hate, remorse, joy, desire - anything you want. Make this feeling be what shapes your character.

Write a few paragraphs describing how he/she feels using the following descriptive measures:

The way they dress/look.
The way they walk/stand/sit.
The way they use their hands.

Do not use thoughts.

Note: We'll be using this character in later exercises.

He paced a measured, short path up and down the narrow passageway just outside the door. Clenched into fists, his hands, encased in bikers? gloves that allowed the ends of his digits to protrude at their tips, shook violently. The teenaged youth?s gelled, spiky, blonde head was bowed, his teeth obviously clenched together.

He stopped randomly for a moment, staring blankly ahead through the loose bangs that hung in his hazel eyes. A muffled growl escaped him, and he started moving again.

His gait was strained and taught as he shoved his white knuckles into the over-large pockets of his droopy black drawers. The black wrist band on his right arm rode up the limb as he muttered something incoherently.

The bright white light from the sun only incensed him more as his temperature rose not only from the dark garments he was wearing, but also his emotional state.

He stopped again, and this time, he let out a loud cry as he slammed his fist into the brick wall. There was a crack and a few pops.

Staring at his hand with a bland expression plastered over his features, he watched the blood drip onto the cement from the deep gash he had created. He noticed the awkward angle of his middle finger and realized that it was broken.

The door opened, and a secretary stepped out, ?Christian? Principal McKinney will see you now.?

Shoving the broken hand into his pocket, the seventeen-year-old stalked into the office.

---------

My chosen emotion: fury.

I just chose to put my character in a story setting; I could have left off the last 2 paragraphs if I wanted.

Anyway, what say you? Lack of metaphors and similies bug you like it does me?? >.<

[pilot03]

I spelled definitely wrong again!

You will definitely get it right next time. Most certainly.

*nods nods*

[AnShino]

*Snickers* Well, I certainly want to write something for this Jackie. Kudos on starting it. What creative writing book did you buy, btw, and does it come with samples?

As for critique on your piece, I thought it was good. It may do well with more similies and metaphors, but anything too obscure would, quite honestly, fly by me or cause me to lose interest and too many similies and metaphors would be... bad. I think you did a very good job overall.

I'm very glad you started this. Let's hope I actually will write something in the future xD.

[zapenstap]

Okay. I'll bite.

In response to Jackie's: I would say it is definitely more story-based in that you have description of what someone is doing leading up to an event, which makes for an interesting introduction to a story. This is a hard challenge, I think, which is what makes it valuable, especially because you can't describe thoughts (what constitutes thought exactly?). Fury comes through cleanly, though without knowing what is making your character furious, it is difficult to empathize with, but that would be ideal in an introduction where the "why" is what keeps the reader going. 17 year olds don't usually get so furious that they break their fingers by punching walls and yet still have enough control to stick around the premise to see the principal. So that's intriguing!

Minor typo: taught = taut

Are metaphors and similes not allowed or did you just choose not to use them so that you would be forced to describe things more literally?


I'll post my own response to the challenge in a little bit.

[Jackie]

*Snickers* Well, I certainly want to write something for this Jackie. Kudos on starting it. What creative writing book did you buy, btw, and does it come with samples?

As for critique on your piece, I thought it was good. It may do well with more similies and metaphors, but anything too obscure would, quite honestly, fly by me or cause me to lose interest and too many similies and metaphors would be... bad. I think you did a very good job overall.

I'm very glad you started this. Let's hope I actually will write something in the future xD.

:-? I totally forgot to respond to this. XD

The book I bought was just titled The Writer's Workshop. I forgot who wrote it, though... ^^;

There are a lot of exercises in it, and it does come with examples of what the assignments are. I don't like all the exercises, and the woman is a bit of a feminist. ^^; - There're a few exercises in there where you're supposed to write about the "tough choices involved in abortion." Obviously, I didn't like those ones. XD

But combined together or with your own ideas of what you want to improve, it's a pretty good book. ^_^ I think you could probably pick up any writer's guide and get a good general idea of some exercises and insights to improve your writing.

And thankies. ^_^

[Jackie]

Okay. I'll bite.

In response to Jackie's: I would say it is definitely more story-based in that you have description of what someone is doing leading up to an event, which makes for an interesting introduction to a story. This is a hard challenge, I think, which is what makes it valuable, especially because you can't describe thoughts (what constitutes thought exactly?). Fury comes through cleanly, though without knowing what is making your character furious, it is difficult to empathize with, but that would be ideal in an introduction where the "why" is what keeps the reader going. 17 year olds don't usually get so furious that they break their fingers by punching walls and yet still have enough control to stick around the premise to see the principal. So that's intriguing!

Minor typo: taught = taut

Are metaphors and similes not allowed or did you just choose not to use them so that you would be forced to describe things more literally?


I'll post my own response to the challenge in a little bit.

^_^ Thankies.

Well, a thought would be like actually writing what he/she thought either through mental dialogue or writing something along the lines of, "He thought it sucked." Instead, through the descriptive measures, you would write, "His narrowed expression betrayed that he was not at all pleased," or whatever. ^_^ Basically, nothing written from the inside; everything has to be written from the point of observance.

That is one thing that I noticed about this particular exercise (that you can't empathize), but that... ah... ^^; belies the intentions of the next assignment. XD

:-? Ehh... You'd be surprised what some 17 year olds do. XD If I'd been next to a brick wall instead of a wooden one, I imagine that at 17, I would have broken my hand. ^^; I couldn't grip a pencil for weeks, at the very least. I chipped a few bones in my fingers...

Aha! That's what I get for trusting Word. XD "No red squigglies... I'm good."

I didn't choose not to use them... I just don't write with them. It's one of my major weaknesses. ^^; Metaphors and similies and all figures of speech are most assuredly allowed.

[zapenstap]

<quote>
Concentration: Descriptive Writing and Character Creation/Depth

Create a new character and assign a feeling to him/her. It can be love, hate, remorse, joy, desire - anything you want. Make this feeling be what shapes your character.

Write a few paragraphs describing how he/she feels using the following descriptive measures:

The way they dress/look.
The way they walk/stand/sit.
<b>The way they use their hands. </b>

Do not use thoughts.

</quote>

<b> Self mutterings while spending way too much time writing this:</b> Let it go, Zap. It?s just a writing exercise. Stop obsessing and write already!


<b></i>His Hands:</b></i>

His hands gripped the controller of a Playstation 2 with the familiarity of a person who owned every game station released in America in the last twenty years. They were memorable hands, not for any particular beauty or ugliness, but because they were the extremities by which a complex, dual personality both touched and retracted from the world. The fingers were long and slender, delicate in their handling of the controller, a smooth, black, plastic device a hand breadth in extension with two stubby legs jutting out from either end of the length nearest the young man who held it, the extremities angled slightly downward like legs so that the controller could stand unaided on a table and also curve to the contours of the palms of the user. This device the young man held with the casual surety of a person accustomed to living a life in which every thought and action was well-reasoned and steeped in concentration and control. The knobby knuckles and joints of the hands and fingers that gripped the controller seemed to attest to the continual effort that such concentration exacted from his psyche, and yet the elegance with which his hands manipulated the minute movements that directed the outcome of the game he played belied that he carried this burden with anything less than casual comfort and uncontested certainty.

It was in this manner that he performed every action of his life. With these hands he flipped the pages of the works of Nietzsche, Kant, and Quinn, adjusted the throttle of his motorcycle, and worked to restore the failed computer network connections of a random assortment of contracted clients and as a personal favors to women in which he had a vested interest, with or without thanks, and sometimes without payment. These tasks and others his steady hands performed with a surety that only the stressed, awkward angles of his fingers seemed to contradict, for he was quick to divert attention to an upraised eyebrow, a shrug of the shoulders, or a cynical smirk that would reflect the discerning eye of an examiner back upon itself in search of some hitherto unperceived weakness or offense.

Although indisposed to physical contact of the casual sort, he initiated a firm handshake in formal situations and harbored a gentle touch that he reserved for women alone. In regard to the latter, he was possessed of a particular fondness for placing a hand on the small of a lover?s back, a gesture of affection he felt attested to the protectiveness and nobility of spirit he smothered from sight and simultaneously expected others to notice and appreciate beneath the layers of dark musings, dark ambitions and self doubt he alternated between suppressing and unleashing. In preparation for utilizing this darker self, he had trained his hands for fighting, but to his never-ending frustration, most of his battles were mental ones, and these he fought in the seclusion of his private home by passing the fingers and thumb of one hand over his eyes, thumb and fingers meeting at the bridge of his nose in a motioned designed to pluck weariness from his consciousness.

He did this while playing his game, hitting the pause button on the Playstation controller at a moment when continual failure threatened to overwhelm his resilience. His hand ached from the exertion of its continual, minimal movements, but he was accustomed to this kind of pain, and with a sudden, sharp movement of his right wrist, threw his fingers to the far wall as if trying to dislodge the bones from their sockets. A loud string of popping and cracking reverberated in the silence as every joint and knuckle in his fingers released all at once the tension of trying to hold his hand together throughout the muscle-straining duration of his playing.

Clenching his fist, he squeezed once and held it until the blood began to drain from his hand, and then, with a shake of the wrist, he repositioned his fingers on the buttons and continued the game.

-------

emotion: There's more of a mood than an emotion, but emotions can be deduced. You're all welcome to guess ^_~.

[zapenstap]

And... my html codes didn't work. Oh well. There are apparently no edit buttons. (Reason? This is an important thread for editing O_O)

[Caliborn]

You have to use the []s instead of the <>s for the quotes! ^^

And huh. I wonder why there are no edit buttons... o.o

[zapenstap]

Lack of edit feature is already annoying me. I already see mistakes (motioned=motion) and some repetitive use of words that I cannot fix. Oh well. It's <i>just</i> a writing exercise >_< ::head desk::