The Newsletter Stand

Drama Newletter for 3-12-08

Ask any athlete and he’ll tell you he warms up his body and stretches his muscles prior to performance. Ballet dancers run through quick versions of their routines, spinning and leaping in modified form, tennis players take a few practice serves before the first point of a match is played and basketball players dribble and pass the ball with team mates. Other professionals go through prep work…doctors review procedures and prepare their instruments, lawyers research cases, but what do authors do ahead of time to prepare for the big novel, or the winning story? Can a writer benefit from a warm-up?

For me, the answer is yes –absolutely. Warm-up writing exercises give me direction, ideas, inspiration, and help me get through what I like to call impulse writing. Impulse writing is necessary to the writing process, it leads us to deeper more meaningful writing; but, it's not the type of writing I want displayed in my finished product.

Here are a few simple ‘warm-up’ drills you can add to your writing routine. Pick one activity per writing session and spend spend five to fifteen minutes running through before you begin your real project writing.

Before you begin, create a space for your warm-up drills. A real live notebook, blog, or journal are great places to start. This way, when writer’s block or lack of inspiration hits you, all you have to do is grab your notebook or open up your online journal and presto…you have instant ideas.

The Word Hound – See how many words you can string together into sentences in your allotted time. Throw transition and clarity out the window. The goal is simply to string together random sentences. No one but you will read these words, so let go. Record your results and try to beat your personal best every time you play The Word Hound.

Noun Sketching. Quickly pick three specific nouns, a person, place and thing. Then, take two – three minutes on each to describe in detail the visual appearance, the aroma or stench, etc.. Go overboard here, providing more detail then you’d use in your actual scenes gives you a nice supply of descriptions when you need them.

Opposites Attract - Pick one noun, a person place or thing. Then, spend half your time writing a paragraph describing all the negative ugly things you can about your noun. Once you’re finished, then use the same object, person, or place and describe it in a pleasant light.

Emotional Roller Coaster- Pick an emotion then describe a facial expression, body movement, a sentence or two of dialogue that describes the emotion.

These are a few of my favorite writing warm-ups. With a few extra minutes tacked onto your writing schedule, you can generate an assortment of ideas and inspirations all at your fingertips, and doing it all while you prepare and sharpen your writing skills.

Have fun and keep writing!
Robin

Here is another fun way to do some exercise writing.

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Try this for warming up!

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Looking for places to submit your drama creations?

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The Not So Calm Before the Storm  (13+) An odd group of birdwatchers take shelter and trouble brews. #1347549 by Sssssh! I'm not really here.

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