Transworld Writers Work-Shop - Time Out: Article Overview

Getting Back on Track by Brian Kiteley

You can use these exercises whenever you find yourself frustrated or stuck at any point in your writing. These can "help you find your rhythm again."

1. Outrunning the Critic - Write 100 short sentences about one of your characters. Do not lift your fingers from the keyboard (or pen from paper) for 100 sentences! The sentences don't have to connect or follow each other logically. This exercise is merely designed to get you moving, to "force you to outrun your own thoughts, your own critical mind."

Be careful not to use the name of your character or a pronoun to start every single sentence. The key to this exercise is "to relax and let your mind find new material and detail." When you finish writing, set the exercise aside for exactly 24 hours before revising. As a variation on this, try substituting a central concept or a key space for your character.

2. Gathering Sensory Details - "This is a very simple exercise, the type of thing I often do towards the end of the revision process. Implicit in this exercise is the idea that you should take notes on the world as often as you can...."

Choose four paragraphs that you think could use a little extra fresh air. Add sensory details, including smell, touch, sound and texture. Try a bit of straightforward research -- go to a place like the one you're describing in that paragraph and take notes on the spot. Go home and sift through the material. "Then, make up some better, more bizarre details."

3. Staging a Rehearsal - "Imitate the method of actors rehearsing a scene, repeating lines and whole sections of a speech, going over mistakes, etc., with several of your characters from a novel or story. Use this social trial and error to find new, submerged material for your story." You should think of this exercise as "artificial and behind-the-scenes work," but it can trigger some realistic dialogue.

4. Adding Elements of Surprise - Write a short scene about a familiar character -- either one of your own or one based on someone you know. Begin the scene by having the character do exactly what you'd expect that character to do. But during the scene, have the character do something totally out of character. "Let the character surprise you."

5. Sending Postcards - Write a story on an actual postcard and send it to an actual friend. (The story should have nothing to do with the friend, or about the fact that you are writing on a postcard). Use one of those pre-stamped cards that is blank on one side, where the address goes on the other side.

Decide on the friend before you begin writing, and let this influence the story. A story written to your mother would be different from one written to your lover. Write the story in one draft. Then, write a copy of the story for yourself, without changing anything from that first draft!

Think about this story for awhile, even for a few days, before you start writing it. Don't introduce yourself to the friend in any way -- just jump right in and start the story!

6. Catching Ideas on Tape - Consider a particular scene you're having trouble with. Ponder the problem overnight, giving yourself instructions to solve it while you're asleep. (Sometimes this works). Wait and ponder some more. When you're ready, use a recorder to put down your thoughts. Set a timer and speak for exactly five minutes. Try to relax and find a proper voice to tell the scene -- melodramatic, natural, falsetto -- whatever works. Don't worry about grammar, complete sentences, or anything except getting those ideas down.

When you're done, set the tape aside for a few days. Then, transcribe exactly what you've said -- all of the "ums" and "ahs" included -- and let this sit for another few days. "Now: what can you do with what you have?"

7. E-mailing Creativity - Write a story in the body of an e-mail to a friend. "This can be part of a longer piece you're working on, or its own work with a beginning, middle and end." Compose your e-mail in one setting, allowing the identity of the friend to color the way you are writing (as with the postcard exercise).

"Certain types of friends will help you think more creatively; writing to a bright, overworked architecture graduate student (who's going to be annoyed at a long e-mail without news) would provoke a significantly different story than writing to a bartender who works three nights a week and seems to sleep the rest of the time."

Send the e-mail. Then, write a different version of the story targeted to another friend. Don't merely copy and paste the story! Write from memory, without looking at the first story. "How does changing your audience change your story?"

8. Revising a Character - Take a character you're not satisfied with. Think about this character out of context of the story. Make a list of stupid things he or she has said over the years -- "things that still make him wince and slap his forehead."

Now, take a short scene that is the most important one for this character -- the one in which the character is defined absolutely for the reader. Change the character significantly, and remember that every change you make might force you to make more changes -- either before or after this scene. "Use the Find function under Edit. Search for the name of your character throughout the story or novel and examine what needs to be updated after you've moved the hump on his shoulder from the right to the left side, for instance."

9. Breaking Your Own "Rules" - Rewrite a small part of a story you've been pondering, "in a way that permits you to be someone other than the person who wrote the story. This is crucial if you want to write great fiction, to see beyond your own limitations and prejudices."

One way to start this process might be to make a list of all the things you accept as rigid rules for your fictional rules. "For example, you might realize you don't allow your central character to travel over a state line south of the state he's in, mentally or physically. Or you have a narrator who won't say, 'I feel' about anything."

Once you've got this list written down, let it sit for awhile. Now you can imagine how to change the list, to create alternatives to your rules. Rewrite the scene without using the list.

10. Playing 20 Questions - Write a fragment about something in your story that "bothers you like a bad tooth." Write in the form of 20 questions and answers. "Make the questions tough and probing, even unsettling, certainly unusual and unexpected." Write out the questions first -- then spend a lot of time thinking about your answer. Make them "lovely, strange, evocative, and part of the process of this story."

Write out the answers carefully, over time. Make an effort to answer each question honestly and imaginatively. (Don't answer the question by "reproducing them slyly in the answers"). Finally, eliminate the questions from this fragment. You now have 20 answers to 20 hidden questions.

This is an excerpt from Brian Kitely's The 3 a.m. Epiphany, published in 2005 by Writer's Digest Books.

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