The Write Spot Blog by Marlene Cullen

Tag: just write

  • Thumbnail sketches

    Figure drawing classes often start with timed gesture drawings of initial poses lasting as short as five seconds before the model moves. Gradually the time increases to 10, 15 and 30 seconds. By the time you get to a minute, it feels as if you have all day to capture the pose on your sketch pad. The idea is to keep you free, dexterous and more focused on process than product. Such short bursts also keep you from taking yourself too seriously—otherwise, you’d quickly become frustrated. —“Train Your Eye for Better Writing,” by Tess Callahan, Writer’s Digest September 2017

    Tess suggests you can do the same with writing. “At odd moments throughout the day, in a diner or in transit, jot down gestures, expressions or snatches of overheard dialogue. . . . Whether or not these little moments make it into whatever story you are writing, they will deepen your awareness of human expressions, inflections and gaits.”

    Most visual artists don’t start on a big canvas without doing countless thumbnail sketches that help sharpen their skills and drive their vision. Writers can benefit from the same.—Tess Callahan

  • The reader reads for dialogue.

    “The reader reads for dialogue more than anything.

    The writer’s habit is to describe, but the reader would rather hear the character.”

    —    Anthony Varallo, May 2017, The Writer

  • Super Power. . . Prompt #342

    If you could have a super power, what would you choose?

    Why did you choose that super power?
    What would you do if you had that super power?

  • Emulate Writers to Improve Your Writing

    The following is an excerpt from “Train Your Eye for Better Writing,” by Tess Callahan, September 2017, Writer’s Digest:

    “I encourage my students to read deeply a broad range of writers, and after each one, try writing a few sentences in that wordsmith’s style. For example, take a signature line from William Faulkner. . . and, while keeping the sentence structure intact, pluck out all of the nouns and verbs and replace them with your own.

    Don’t place these emulated lines directly into your own writing. . . Instead, the idea is to practice emulating lines so that the many different styles can work their way into your brain, spin around in the blender of your subconscious, and serve to inform your own unique voice.

    No art form exists in a vacuum. The impressionists were friends and rivals who hung around in the same cafes, shared, traded and borrowed, and pushed one another forward. Dancers learn from dancers. New musical genres develop because artists keep responding to one another.

    The excellent book Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose helps readers pull aside the curtain to notice what the author-magician is doing, to isolate how each one manages gesture, dialogue and character development, and to learn from others’ strengths and weaknesses.”

    Note from Marlene:  You can use any author’s writing for this exercise. Suggest using a genre that you want to write in. No matter what, Just Write!

    Another blog post that might be helpful:  How to be a better writer.

  • A tradition involving your grandparents. Prompt #340

    “As the years slip past, we become more and more aware of what’s really important in life. With every passing season, we see more clearly and know more surely that the love and traditions a family shares are treasures beyond value.” — A Grandparent’s Legacy: Your Life Story in Your Own Words by Thomas Nelson

    It occurs to me (Marlene) that we think our lives are boring. We think “No one wants to hear about me.”

    But. . . aren’t you curious about your grandparents and your ancestors? Maybe you are lucky and know all about them. If you are like me, you know little about your family that came before you.

    So, write your stories. Write stories about your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles. I bet someone will be interested. I bet more than one person will be interested.

    Write about a tradition involving your grandparents. Or about anyone in your extended family.

    Just Write!

  • Favorite outfit or school uniform . . . Prompt #339

    Write about a favorite childhood outfit – dress, pants, top or favorite childhood dressy outfit – on what occasions would you wear it?

    Or write about school uniform.

  • Being Kind . . .  Prompt #338

    Write about a kindness a stranger did for you.

    Or a kindness you offered to a stranger.

     

     

     

  • Fire Up The Reader’s Brain 

    “Once you are clear about how to choose your scenes, develop them to create ‘the dream’ of your memoir. The term ‘fictional dream’ comes from John Garner’s The Art of Fiction in which he writes that we weave a world for our readers with every detail we include —every scene, description, character and piece of dialogue. When we fail to offer continuous cues to scenes in that world, the reader falls out of the dream.

    The best way to create this dream is to write vivid scenes that stimulate the brain to see, feel and taste that world. Research in the neuroscience of writing demonstrates that when we read a story with sensual details, our brain fires up in the areas of visualization, taste and sound.”

    Excerpted from “You Must Remember This” by Linda Joy Myers, The Writer February 2016

    Posts about using sensory detail in writing:

    Use Sensory Detail And Be Specific

    Delicious! By Ruth Reichl

    Just write the scene as you see, feel, hear, sense, taste, dream it!

  • Does your memoir have a theme?

    Should your memoir have a theme? Yes, according to Brooke Warner.

    “Your memoir has an atmosphere, the air a reader breathes, and it’s called theme. Its presence is felt in every scene, whether or not it’s explicitly named by the author.” —Brooke Warner, “Back to Port,” The Writers, February 2016

    “If your theme is vague, such as transformation, try to articulate what initiated your transformation.”  Warner gives the example of Wild  by Cheryl Strayed and H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, both about transformation while working through grief.

    Find your theme and tell your story.

    Read Brooke’s guest blog post, here on The Write Spot Blog: Why Keep Writing When No One Is Listening.

    Just Write!

  • Rewrite “What I Did This Summer” . . . Prompt #336

    Today’s writing prompt is excerpted from Everyday Creative Writing, Panning For Gold in the Kitchen Sink by Michael C. Smith and Suzanne Greenberg.

    Ben Johnson, a seventeenth-century English writer and scholar, characterized poetry as “What has been oft thought but ne’r so well expressed.” In so saying, Johnson relieves poets of the obligation of coming up with new ideas and focuses on the perhaps infinite number of ways that ideas can be expressed.

    To illustrate this idea, consider that most of us were required to write a “What I Did This Summer” essay at some point in our school careers. While the subject matter for these essays is largely the same among classmates – camp, swimming pools, summer jobs – the ways in which we wrote our stories those details we chose to highlight and those we chose to omit, are what gave each piece its own flavor and originality.

    For example, the following were written by two sixth-graders.

    1. I went away to camp this summer, which was interesting. I had never been to camp before and I enjoyed meeting new people. I slept in a bunkhouse with five other girls. I went sailing and learned how to macramé, which really is more boring than it might sound. I made a new friend who was very nice. We did a lot of activities together, which made everything a little more interesting than it was before. It’s important to have a good friend at camp.

    2. Has anyone ever tried to convince you that tying knots is fun? How about sitting on a stagnant pond waiting for a gust of wind that never comes? Well I spent the summer waiting to be convinced that either of these activities were fun. At least I made a friend, Bobbie. Finally, we got smart and started hiding behind the bunk and reading her sister’s old issues of Seventeen when it was time for knot-tying class – whoops, I mean macramé.

    Everyday Creative Writing, Panning For Gold in the Kitchen Sink  by Michael C. Smith and Suzanne Greenberg

    For another prompt about vacation writing, please click on The Real Summer Vacation.