Writing Exercise
Notebook Entries. Top Story - September 2025.
Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter — What if? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers prompts — The Exercise: Write one page a day. Concentrate on observation and description, not feeling. For example, if you receive a letter, the ordinary reaction is to write in the diary, “I received a letter that made me happy.” (or sad). Instead, describe the size of the envelope, the quality of the paper, and what the stamps looked like. Keep your diary without using the verb to be. Forms of the verb to be don’t create any vivid images. By avoiding its use, you get into the habit of choosing more interesting verbs. You’ll also be more accurate. For example, some people will say “John Smith is a really funny guy,” when what they really mean is “John Smith makes me laugh,” or “I like John Smith’s sense of humor.” Experiment with sentence length. Keep the diary for a week in sentences of ten words or less. Then try writing each day’s account in a single sentence. Avoid use of “and” to connect the long sentence; try out other conjunctions. Switch your diary to third person for a while, so that instead of writing I, you can write about he or she. Then, try mixing the point of view. Start the day in third person and switch into first person to comment on the action. By interspersing first and third-person points of view, you can experiment with stream of consciousness and the interior monologue. Try keeping your diary in an accent — first the accent of somebody who is learning how to write English, then the accent of somebody learning to speak English. Keep it in baby talk; Baby want. Baby hurt. Baby want food. Baby want love. Baby walk. Try making lists for a diary entry — just a record of the nouns of that day: toothbrush, coffee, subway tokens, schoolbooks, gym shoes. The Objective: To enhance your powers of observation and description without having to juggle the demands of characterization and plot.
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