Writing exercises by Susan Breen

(View entire post here)

One of the oddest things I've noticed in my creative writing classes is that students tend to do much better with writing exercises than they do with work they originate themselves. For example, tell someone to write a fifty word story using words of only one syllable and you'll get genius. Ask someone to write a story on anything at all, and it's a little more hit or miss.

Why is that?

I don't know, though I've spent a lot of time thinking about it. Perhaps exercises blast writers out of ingrained thought patterns; they force us to be original. Or perhaps writing exercises are fun and they remind us that writing should be joyful (and reading too!) For whatever reason, writing exercises play an important part in a fiction class, which is why I included ten of them in my novel. My hope was that readers might feel inclined to do some of them, just for the fun of it.

One of my favorite exercises in the novel is one I came up with after my youngest son took part in a local play. There happened to be a young man in the cast who had been a member of a famous boys' band, and I was fascinated by that kid. There was something so charismatic about him; he literally glowed from within when he was on stage. Maybe that's why they call them stars.

Anyway, from that boy, I came up with this exercise:

A boat sinks during a storm, and only ten of its passengers make it onto the lifeboat. One by one the survivors are knocked off until, after a month at sea, only two are left. There's not enough food for both of them, so one will have to get rid of the other. One of them is a teenage girl who is very strong for her age, but she is blind. The other is a musician from a successful boys' band. He is twenty-six years old and smaller than the girl. Who will survive? Write the final scene.

Yes, it's a bit violent; I know. But you'll be amazed at the passions that erupt from you when you start to write the scene. Give it a try. See what happens.

View more information on The Fiction Class

Susan Breen, The Fiction Class, mother, writing, New York, story, Penguin Books, books