{"id":1941,"date":"2018-07-18T10:32:23","date_gmt":"2018-07-18T14:32:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/?p=1941"},"modified":"2018-08-02T10:27:35","modified_gmt":"2018-08-02T14:27:35","slug":"five-writing-exercises-for-ben_brainerd-and-anyone-else-looking-for-a-prompt-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2018\/07\/five-writing-exercises-for-ben_brainerd-and-anyone-else-looking-for-a-prompt-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Writing Exercises for @ben_brainerd (and Anyone Else Looking for a Prompt) #writing"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">If anyone&#8217;s got any ideas for additional challenges, let me know.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Ben Brainerd (@ben_brainerd) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ben_brainerd\/status\/999622931700269057?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 24, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Hey Ben (and the rest of the world),<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Sorry this took so long to put together.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Life happened.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Here goes:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li class=\"p1\"><b>&#8220;There is a <\/b><span style=\"text-decoration: line-through;\"><b><i>corpse<\/i><\/b><\/span><b> in the <\/b><span style=\"text-decoration: line-through;\"><b><i>barn<\/i><\/b><\/span><b>!!!&#8221;<\/b><span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>X finds a corpse in the barn. S\/he needs to go tell Y about this, but doesn&#8217;t want Z (who is in the same room) to grok the situation.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>(Back when I used to teach high school, we&#8217;d frame this exercise like so: <i>&#8220;You have found a corpse in the barn; alert your sister to this fact.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>You may not use the words &#8216;body,&#8217; &#8216;dead,&#8217; &#8216;corpse,&#8217; or &#8216;barn.&#8217;<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Go!&#8221;<\/i>)<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Who are X, Y, and Z to each other?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Why must X inform Y of this situation?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Why doesn&#8217;t X (or Y or both) want Z to know?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>What happens if (when?) Z figures it out?<\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><b>Eschew the Voodoo<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span><\/b>We all have voodoo around our creative processes: We only work in Scrivener or with this font in Word or using that pen or writing in a Moleskine or before 8am or whatever.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>For your next project eschew your usually voodoo and replace it with a totally foreign &#8220;habit.&#8221;<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Write the story entirely on 3&#215;5 cards, or in the &#8220;Stickies&#8221; app on your computer, or in emails sent to yourself from your phone, or on a piece of crap 99-cent notebook from the drug store or in Comic Sans or only working before getting out of bed or after brushing your teeth for the night or whatever.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Feel how changing tools changes the feel of writing and the piece itself&#8211;but also see how little difference it can make, how your good work is still good scrawled on a Post-It note stuck to your kitchen table, and how lazy hackwork is still just that, even when you&#8217;ve used your favorite pen in the prettiest journal anyone ever gave you for Xmas.<\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><b>Write in <\/b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2018\/06\/marketing-rhetoric-writing-and-mr-rogers-a-primer-of-sorts\/\"><b>Freddish<\/b><\/a>: Write your next story in a style that is a. highly constrained and b. very different from your &#8220;default&#8221; voice\u2014for example, borrow the voice of an autoclave installation manual, or a EMT handbook, or extremely constrained vocabulary (see, for example, any early-reader children&#8217;s book, of Randall Munroe&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2ux1wjf\"><span class=\"s2\"><i>Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words Hardcover<\/i><\/span><\/a><span class=\"s2\">). <\/span>My absolute favorite recent fiction application of this technique has to be Greg van Eekhout&#8217;s &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/escapepod.org\/2009\/06\/05\/episode-202-will-you-be-an-astronaut\/\">Will You Be an Astronaut?<\/a>&#8220;<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>That story fucking crushes my heart every time.<\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><b>Rewrite What Vexes You:<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span><\/b>Take some story that recently annoyed you by not living up to your expectations and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2018\/06\/rewrite-what-annoys-you\/\">rewrite it the right way<\/a>. (I <i>just<\/i> found myself doing this the other day via text message with my Mom and sister after we all separately saw, and were annoyed by, <i>Solo<\/i>\u2014a film that I desperately wanted to love, but could not; it has<span class=\"s2\"> some good gags, but a thin plot that is massively overburdened by something-for-everyone, &#8220;fan service,&#8221; and box ticking. \u00a0Something that\u0092s for everyone is for no one, and box ticking us inherently boring.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Most annoyingly: You can actually make <i>Solo<\/i> into a really <i>good <\/i>movie purely through cuts; it&#8217;s a good, lean story buried in flab.)<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><b>Write to the Formula:<\/b><span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>I usually use the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/tag\/454510\/\">45\/45\/10 Formula<\/a> as a tool for revising\u2014I have something roughed out and now it&#8217;s time to make it run smooth\u2014but you can use it to build a story from scratch.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Outline it in three sections (<b><i>I.<\/i><\/b> is the Setup, <b><i>II.<\/i><\/b> is the Tangle, and <b><i>III.<\/i><\/b> is the Resolution).<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Flesh out each section, noting that <b><i>I. <\/i><\/b>and <b><i>II. <\/i><\/b>need to have about equal amounts of material, while section <b><i>III.<\/i><\/b> has only about a quarter as much stuff.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Draft from there.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p class=\"p1\"><!--more--><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><b>BONUS<\/b>: Here&#8217;s another <i>SNL<\/i> gag with a near-perfect 45\/45\/10 structure.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Take a few minutes now and figure out how to rewrite it to make it perfect.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/NYwPsasQf58\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If anyone&#8217;s got any ideas for additional challenges, let me know. \u2014 Ben Brainerd (@ben_brainerd) May 24, 2018 Hey Ben (and the rest of the world), Sorry this took so long to put together.\u00a0 Life happened.\u00a0 Here goes: &#8220;There is a corpse in the barn!!!&#8221;\u00a0 X finds a corpse in the barn. S\/he needs to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2018\/07\/five-writing-exercises-for-ben_brainerd-and-anyone-else-looking-for-a-prompt-writing\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Five Writing Exercises for @ben_brainerd (and Anyone Else Looking for a Prompt) #writing&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_share_on_mastodon":"1"},"categories":[11,8],"tags":[319,113,52,26,55,332,25,333,331],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1941"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1941"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1945,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1941\/revisions\/1945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}