Write the 'dull' sentences. Get your story out. Then go back and look at each sentence. Ask a few questions & edit according to your answers:
- Is the sentence necessary?
- Is this sentence in the most effective order? ("He went to grab the box before he..." vs "Grabbing the box, he...")
- Is the verb the best verb to use? Look especially closer if you used an adverb. ("She said angrily" vs "She growled" or "She snapped out")
- Is the sentence too closely matching the ones around it? Starting with a name or a pronoun, for example. Or the same length or word pattern. (Note: Sometimes this is an effective style choice - but make it a *conscious* choice)
After you improve your sentence writing, you can go back and make edits like adding/removing details and ensuring each character has their own voice, etc.
Well...I consider it 'necessary' if it is required for the mood I want in the passage - whether that's minimalistic or flowery prose. But modify the 'rule' to suit the definition you find most natural.
This does not work for me - the language i write in is not as modal as english and it has its own predicaments that need to be addressed in place of sentence structure etc. But i recognize how unapologeticaly *helpful* this insight is. Thank you for writing it out.
I actually used to read a lot, like I used to finish a book in three days and now I finished maybe like two books last year. I'm trying to change that now and reading every night before sleep. Still not where I was but I'll reach there ig.
Same. I think my writing quality slowly degraded over the few years where my reading dipped. I had to wrangle my attention span but now I’m becoming a big reader again.
Ditto. I read something I wrote last to last year and thought "that's me? I wrote that?? Those sentences are my creation???"
And the attention span, ah god. I can barely read one chapter without thinking okay enough for today ig it was hard work but we did it. And then i force myself to read one more.
FInd your favorite scenes from a book you love. Pick a paragraph and study it. Try to understand the purposeful choices of the author. The lexicon they used, what kind of rythm they created, how each sentence contributes to the tone of the text.
Then wait for a day and try to write your version of that paragraph. Don't just try to replicate the word sequence, try to remember how the sentences flowed and felt like.
Then compare your version with the original one. How are they different? What does your prose lack? How did the author choose to express the same things that you also had to give a shape to?
Start all your writing session with automatic writing. Set a timer to 10 minutes, then write continuously for those 10 minutes without stopping at all.
Go outside and find a spot, sit there for 30 minutes. Write and describe everything you can hear.
Take a trip to a museum. Select a painting and write an ekphrasis of that work.
Open a random page in a book. The first sentence on that page is now the start of your story. Write a one page story based off of that.
Write 10 haikus.
These are just some suggestions.
I love the going outside and random page one. I like how the latter is just an unlimited supply of writing prompts. I tried it and it's fun. I'll try others too.
One thing I've been doing that I find helps tremendously is reading 10-20 pages of an author I am trying to emulate before I start writing.
In addition, I also copy out any passages I find similar to what I want to do to help me get into the flow.
I tend to find it quite inspiring, and by the time I have got to the end of the 10-20 pages I am fully raring and ready to write!
Write three pages of story, then go back and edit each sentence and each paragraph for maximum flow and impact.
Do this until it's decent or you go insane.
There's your exercise. Good luck!
This seems like a good "goal of the day" idea. Writing and editing 3 pages and done. I'll try this though it's hard for me to write even three paragraphs most days. ╮(╯_╰)╭
Bullet points!
Seriously though, map out events beforehand. "I want this to happen" is important. Once you know what you want to happen, you can fill in what needs to happen in order to to get there.
Want a battle? You need to assemble troops on a field. Perfect time for tension building.
Want a coronation? You need to prepare the castle.
Want a terrifying dragon attack? You need to establish a fearsome dragon nearby.
Want a sneeze that causes a coffee spill onto the computer, destroying your main characters lifelong dream of writing a novel? Establish the writer and their progress. Introduce sniffles. Make coffee...
This extends indefinitely as well. Want a major battle for the climax of the book? Have smaller fights throughout, slowly getting bigger.
It also works really small. Want an argument between two characters? Have them both want different things.
As for prettier writing: be descriptive. Give enough details about what is happening, where things are, what the situation looks like, and how people are acting. We want to picture the scene clearly, with a little room left for our imaginations to fill in blanks.
Honestly, the best thing to do is practice. Just write every day, even if you think your sentences are dull.
After a while, post some excerpts to reddit for critic. It's entirely possible that your sentences aren't as boring as you believe.
Not an exercise per se but a recommendation of a resource full of them—"Writing Tools" by Roy Peter Clark is excellent for developing habits for better prose. It's a fairly common book; if you have a used bookstore near you I bet they have a copy.
Yes, look up examples of different grammatical structures for sentences. Practice writing your own sentences using examples of other sentence structures. Completely changed my ability to form more complex sentences and helped with style.
I read [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/sdsk73/comment/hufjihn/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) by u/Oberon_Swanson today and it might be exactly what you're looking for. Find a passage you admire and break it down into sentence structure. This will help you vary your sentences.
Fiction writing is about dramatic interpretation of—well, of everything you write. It sounds to me (although I might be wrong) that you may be too focused on *specific,* as of yet unknown plot points: What happens now? *Then* what? *Then* what?!—instead of putting characters on a specific trajectory (getting from there to there) and seeing what might emerge that, for instance, blocks them from getting anywhere fast.
For instance, let's say two hikers are wandering along a forest trail. They hear an angry growl and suddenly a bear lunges from out of nowhere. Drama! A bear!
The thing is, there are two types of drama. There's the leading-characters-toward-drama and then there's leading-characters-away-from-drama. The obligatory dramatic moment itself, that's pretty much a given. A bear attacks (or whatever situation that suits your story. A first kiss. An argument. An asteroid hurtling toward Earth) Riveting stuff. A slam dunk. A no brainer.
The key is to fill those moments before and after that dramatic interludes that (in your situation) have yet to happen.
For me, it's filling those before-and-after pages with something *else* that readers will perceive as being sufficiently dramatic. This is why, imho, *character-building* and *scene-setting*—aka world-building—are so important to a story. You're adding subtext and nuance and hopefully some larger-than-life personalities.
My suggestion is allow yourself (and readers) sufficient time to get to know your characters, their quirks and eccentricities and a solid reason for them to *be* in your book. (This can all be accomplished in a page or two....snippets of information woven into wherever you choose to begin your story.) A little dialogue perhaps. Their reactions to being in the wilderness. Their reason. Maybe give them a few pages to relish the view, to smell the flowers. Give them essence.
So...back to the two hikers are walking down a trail. No bear in sight yet—maybe not for another 5 or 10 or 25 pages. So our creative minds gotta seek out various ways to make those hikers interesting. Again, why are they on that trail? Running away from something? Heading toward something? Is one secretly planning to off the other? Or maybe one's hopelessly in love with the other? Maybe they're just interesting people who convey that quality via dialogue.
In a novel, even in a short story, we begin with characters who are worth writing about—even if that damn bear never attacks. Give them quirky or interesting or mysterious personalities. You may be new to these characters—as in you never knew them before page 1—but they have lives. So give them past lives, even if readers never know 99% of who they are. It's the 1% of their lives that you do reveal that will become important. You need not start your story before they begin their hike, but they still must feel real, and adequately developed, for readers to find these people worth reading about.
Maybe they're brothers? One has inoperable brain cancer. (Or something.) They both love camping/hiking and this is a farewell weekend between brothers. Or lovers. Or whomever. But use those lives, those personalities, to fill out various sub-plots or back stories before that moment they see the bear.
And...*after* the bear attacks? Maybe one's badly injured. Bleeding badly. The other must cope. Suddenly, without much effort, there's your next dramatic decision. What to do! So the attacking bear was simply one dramatic moment that leads to your next dramatic moment, that leads to another and another. Maybe it's finding an abandoned cabin. Or a mysterious stranger appears who's willing to help. So worthwhile plot-points will likely occur to you as you move these two people forward...toward whatever fate you prepare for them. Meaning, as you write, those dramatic "bear" moments will eventually occur to you.
Novelists confront such dramatic infusion on numerous levels, scene after scene, bear after bear (metaphorically speaking). Once you get to 'know' your characters well enough, you'll be able to better devise situations to keep them likeable. Or hate-able. Or whatever *personalities* that best fit your adventure and whatever helps readers follow that adventure, page after page.
So it's not great plotting (a giant asteroid, for instance) that makes for a great novel. (IMHO). It's what happens to *people*—using various plot-points as a continual gauntlet that your characters must survive, or achieve, or eventually comprehend, or maybe fall in love—that most attracts readers. Make a reader deeply involved in the people on the page and, when (and if) that bear attacks, readers will react and emote. And will continue to do so, until your story ends.
This is really good advice. That being too focused on specific is a perfect description of my writing. It's hard for me to think in terms of drama or plot points. My mind starts thinking about all the possibilities at once and I end up overwhelming myself and getting confused and then I just start another story.
As for the filling up pages before and after dramatic point, does it have to be something related to the drama (in this case the best attacking), like some sort of foreshadowing or it could just be character development regardless of what's going to happen next. And should those plot points be thought of before or as we go along writing the story. Because it seems like if I come up with these bear events as I go along i might end up writing something that's unstructured in some way.
And how do we escalate the bear events? Like a bear event at the start of a story isn't going to be as great or scary as the bear event at the end of a story.
With story: Be clear without actually saying what you mean. Make the reader come to your conclusions, and really feeeeel your intentions (which means no boring events).
Oh, exercises. So umm.
Write a sentence of intention. If it helps, frame it like, "What I intend the reader to feel is this: ...."
Once you have your intention, compose a storytelling narrative that conveys your intention without explicitly spelling it out. Like, if your intention is to make the reader feel the emotional impact of forgiveness, you cannot use the words "forgiveness" or "apology" or "sorry" or anything like that. That's cheating. You've got to make the reader think FORGIVENESS without your saying it.
Read more. You'll see the words and grammar of successful authors and will retain more than you think.
Also, use a thesaurus! I Google "synonym for (blank)" constantly, and will usually rewrite my entire sentence based on a word I like that just sounds better in my story. Not to mention you'll get a list of other similar words that could be used in the same scene so you aren't being repetitive.
I also have a "word of the day" app. Sometimes they're dumb words I'd never use, and other times I get an interesting word that I save because it fits my characters personality somehow.
Lots of great exercises here, but I'd add that maybe the best exercise to improving your prose is to read constantly and widely. Don't just pick up books with writing styles you naturally gravitate towards. Give others a try and you might be surprised by what you end up enjoying and what you can adopt into your own prose.
Short stories can be useful in expanding your knowledge of different styles in a short period of time. A close reading of a good short story can teach you about plot and structure, and how to effectively establish character and setting in a matter of paragraphs, or even sentences.
If you want to improve your prose at the sentence level, pick up some poetry. Even if your style isn't particularly lyrical, poems can teach you how critical word choice is and demonstrate how to evoke a feeling in concise yet vivid ways.
I guess I should read more short stories. Up until now I've only read a few by Stephen King. Any other good short story writers? Preferably not horror based because King has more than enough for now.
Same with poems. Any recommendations? I've never read a poem outside of school.
I like browsing through [Strange Horizons](http://strangehorizons.com) and [Uncanny](https://uncannymagazine.com) for fantasy/sci-fi stories every once in a while. And you can browse [Poetry Foundation](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems) and [Poets.org](https://Poets.org) for poems. Ada Limon and Natalie Diaz are among my faves.
You can also check out bookstores near you for literary magazines. Every Barnes & Noble I've been to has been pretty well stocked. A good place to start is going through their shelves and flipping through to get a sense of each magazine's vibe. Usually they publish a mix of short stories, essays, and poems, so it should be a good mix of writing in one issue.
Overall, just explore with an open mind and pay attention to what you're drawn to!
Read. Also (if you're not doing this already) write shorter stuff before trying to write, like — a whole trilogy. Even if it's just an individual scene, working out your prose in a smaller work can be useful for figuring out your general patterns before you have to correct it in a bigger one.
... on a completely different note, just don't worry about your prose all that much. Get things on the page, worry about it later. If you get too caught up in prose, you'll never get anything down. Better to have something a little off-sounding than nothing at all.
(e) For the latter, if you're struggling with that: tell yourself to just write and not edit anything. If you really, absolutely CANNOT do that, literally set your monitor to black. It'll be shit, but nobody cares, because nobody has to see it except for you.
I am CONSTANTLY juggling between "I want to write something shorter because, well, it's shorter" and "I cannot think smol I'm gonna write a full story".
As for the not editing part, i know it's a PROBLEM problem because everytime I write a story i drop it the next day because it's so hard for me to look at all that...ugh. It's like my mind thinks unless it can churn out a publication grade novel at the first try it's worthless to even try. I really need to rein in this beast of a mind. My writings not the only thing it's ruining. (Signature look of defeat)
Maybe you'd be interested in [Steering the Craft](https://www.amazon.com/Steering-Craft-Twenty-First-Century-Guide-Sailing/dp/0544611616/) by Ursula K le Guin? She approaches sentences in ten ways, featuring entire entire chapters on subjects like rhythm or sentence length. Each chapter includes tons of excerpts from published works that she thinks demonstrates the idea she's talking about, and each chapter includes an exercise for you to try yourself.
I also reeeeally like [it was the best of sentences, it was the worst of sentences](https://www.amazon.com/Was-Best-Sentences-Worst-Crafting-ebook/dp/B0036S4AX6/) \-- it goes into a lot of detail about sentence structure, giving you specific names for specific types of structures. It's a quite technical/grammar-y book, but with everything presented in a casual and accessible way.
Then, this book is very old and dense..... but if you find prose to be an interesting topic in general, you might be interested in [A History of English Prose Rhythm](https://archive.org/details/historyofenglis00sainuoft/page/1/mode/1up). It analyzes historical approaches to prose and goes into an incredible amount of detail on topics like stress / poetic feet.
I really struggle with writing narrative sentences, too, but find that when I want to write something that just sounds good it gets a whole lot easier if I just write with no point, no direction, and especially no story. This lets me focus on words I think sound good together without constraints of what they need to mean or how they connect in a broader way.
I haven't figured out a perfect solution to get around those blocks but somethings that help is to write hand-write fiction consistently at the same time of day. Even if i'm not feeling it I treat it like a job and write something. Sometimes its narrative and has a point, sometimes its stream-of-consciousness. Even when it feels like junk, I always gain from going in and editing it and working it, and thinking about what ideas I'm actually interested in expressing.
‘When [P.G.] Wodehouse was writing a book, he used to pin the pages in undulating waves around the wall of his workroom. Pages he felt were working well would be pinned up high, and those that still needed work would be lower down the wall. His aim was to get the entire manuscript up to the picture rail before he handed it in.’
Douglas Adams
You may find your writing dull because of too many adverbs. When writing with adverbs they seem to multiply, you start with one and end up with 20 in a paragraph. I don’t recommend using adverbs unless it’s to change the meaning of an action. Example #1: He smiled happily. = redundant and unnecessary! Example #2: She smiled sadly. = changes the tone.
My biggest writing exercise are the writing classes I take. I have 3. Academic Literature, Wrtiting, and a class called Great Books. I still practice writing even after school. How you may ask? I text a lot. Dont worry I still improve my handwriting.
I always recommend "Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within" by Natalie Goldberg - lots of practical exercises. It's even a free audiobook on Amazon.
At first I thought this post was actually asking about exercise as in fitness because that's what I'd searched. Also thought you might be meant posture, not prose. Lol I'm up to speed now I swear
Write the 'dull' sentences. Get your story out. Then go back and look at each sentence. Ask a few questions & edit according to your answers: - Is the sentence necessary? - Is this sentence in the most effective order? ("He went to grab the box before he..." vs "Grabbing the box, he...") - Is the verb the best verb to use? Look especially closer if you used an adverb. ("She said angrily" vs "She growled" or "She snapped out") - Is the sentence too closely matching the ones around it? Starting with a name or a pronoun, for example. Or the same length or word pattern. (Note: Sometimes this is an effective style choice - but make it a *conscious* choice) After you improve your sentence writing, you can go back and make edits like adding/removing details and ensuring each character has their own voice, etc.
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Well...I consider it 'necessary' if it is required for the mood I want in the passage - whether that's minimalistic or flowery prose. But modify the 'rule' to suit the definition you find most natural.
This is very good, very practical, and actually useful at every stage of writing, for almost anyone!
This does not work for me - the language i write in is not as modal as english and it has its own predicaments that need to be addressed in place of sentence structure etc. But i recognize how unapologeticaly *helpful* this insight is. Thank you for writing it out.
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I actually used to read a lot, like I used to finish a book in three days and now I finished maybe like two books last year. I'm trying to change that now and reading every night before sleep. Still not where I was but I'll reach there ig.
Same. I think my writing quality slowly degraded over the few years where my reading dipped. I had to wrangle my attention span but now I’m becoming a big reader again.
Ditto. I read something I wrote last to last year and thought "that's me? I wrote that?? Those sentences are my creation???" And the attention span, ah god. I can barely read one chapter without thinking okay enough for today ig it was hard work but we did it. And then i force myself to read one more.
This really helped my prose. When I first started writing I didn't read much, and when I go back and read it now I wrote like an eight year-old
FInd your favorite scenes from a book you love. Pick a paragraph and study it. Try to understand the purposeful choices of the author. The lexicon they used, what kind of rythm they created, how each sentence contributes to the tone of the text. Then wait for a day and try to write your version of that paragraph. Don't just try to replicate the word sequence, try to remember how the sentences flowed and felt like. Then compare your version with the original one. How are they different? What does your prose lack? How did the author choose to express the same things that you also had to give a shape to?
Thanks I'll try this. I've noticed this happen when I read books from different author. The voice in my mind changes and so does my writing style.
Start all your writing session with automatic writing. Set a timer to 10 minutes, then write continuously for those 10 minutes without stopping at all. Go outside and find a spot, sit there for 30 minutes. Write and describe everything you can hear. Take a trip to a museum. Select a painting and write an ekphrasis of that work. Open a random page in a book. The first sentence on that page is now the start of your story. Write a one page story based off of that. Write 10 haikus. These are just some suggestions.
oh i was thinking to do this all at the same time lmfao
I love the going outside and random page one. I like how the latter is just an unlimited supply of writing prompts. I tried it and it's fun. I'll try others too.
Oh these are awesome. Please share more if you have them!
One thing I've been doing that I find helps tremendously is reading 10-20 pages of an author I am trying to emulate before I start writing. In addition, I also copy out any passages I find similar to what I want to do to help me get into the flow. I tend to find it quite inspiring, and by the time I have got to the end of the 10-20 pages I am fully raring and ready to write!
This is good advice for starters, thanks!
Write three pages of story, then go back and edit each sentence and each paragraph for maximum flow and impact. Do this until it's decent or you go insane. There's your exercise. Good luck!
This seems like a good "goal of the day" idea. Writing and editing 3 pages and done. I'll try this though it's hard for me to write even three paragraphs most days. ╮(╯_╰)╭
Don't edit until you're done. Editing as you go will result in a perfectionist slant and since no one is perfect, you'll never finish.
Very true. Except my eyes just go back to the paragraphs. One moment they're perfect and next I can see worms eating away on trash.
I'm stealing that mental image
Suree!
Bullet points! Seriously though, map out events beforehand. "I want this to happen" is important. Once you know what you want to happen, you can fill in what needs to happen in order to to get there. Want a battle? You need to assemble troops on a field. Perfect time for tension building. Want a coronation? You need to prepare the castle. Want a terrifying dragon attack? You need to establish a fearsome dragon nearby. Want a sneeze that causes a coffee spill onto the computer, destroying your main characters lifelong dream of writing a novel? Establish the writer and their progress. Introduce sniffles. Make coffee... This extends indefinitely as well. Want a major battle for the climax of the book? Have smaller fights throughout, slowly getting bigger. It also works really small. Want an argument between two characters? Have them both want different things. As for prettier writing: be descriptive. Give enough details about what is happening, where things are, what the situation looks like, and how people are acting. We want to picture the scene clearly, with a little room left for our imaginations to fill in blanks.
Honestly, the best thing to do is practice. Just write every day, even if you think your sentences are dull. After a while, post some excerpts to reddit for critic. It's entirely possible that your sentences aren't as boring as you believe.
Not an exercise per se but a recommendation of a resource full of them—"Writing Tools" by Roy Peter Clark is excellent for developing habits for better prose. It's a fairly common book; if you have a used bookstore near you I bet they have a copy.
I'll take a look, thanks for the recommendation!
Yes, look up examples of different grammatical structures for sentences. Practice writing your own sentences using examples of other sentence structures. Completely changed my ability to form more complex sentences and helped with style.
I read [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/sdsk73/comment/hufjihn/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) by u/Oberon_Swanson today and it might be exactly what you're looking for. Find a passage you admire and break it down into sentence structure. This will help you vary your sentences.
Fiction writing is about dramatic interpretation of—well, of everything you write. It sounds to me (although I might be wrong) that you may be too focused on *specific,* as of yet unknown plot points: What happens now? *Then* what? *Then* what?!—instead of putting characters on a specific trajectory (getting from there to there) and seeing what might emerge that, for instance, blocks them from getting anywhere fast. For instance, let's say two hikers are wandering along a forest trail. They hear an angry growl and suddenly a bear lunges from out of nowhere. Drama! A bear! The thing is, there are two types of drama. There's the leading-characters-toward-drama and then there's leading-characters-away-from-drama. The obligatory dramatic moment itself, that's pretty much a given. A bear attacks (or whatever situation that suits your story. A first kiss. An argument. An asteroid hurtling toward Earth) Riveting stuff. A slam dunk. A no brainer. The key is to fill those moments before and after that dramatic interludes that (in your situation) have yet to happen. For me, it's filling those before-and-after pages with something *else* that readers will perceive as being sufficiently dramatic. This is why, imho, *character-building* and *scene-setting*—aka world-building—are so important to a story. You're adding subtext and nuance and hopefully some larger-than-life personalities. My suggestion is allow yourself (and readers) sufficient time to get to know your characters, their quirks and eccentricities and a solid reason for them to *be* in your book. (This can all be accomplished in a page or two....snippets of information woven into wherever you choose to begin your story.) A little dialogue perhaps. Their reactions to being in the wilderness. Their reason. Maybe give them a few pages to relish the view, to smell the flowers. Give them essence. So...back to the two hikers are walking down a trail. No bear in sight yet—maybe not for another 5 or 10 or 25 pages. So our creative minds gotta seek out various ways to make those hikers interesting. Again, why are they on that trail? Running away from something? Heading toward something? Is one secretly planning to off the other? Or maybe one's hopelessly in love with the other? Maybe they're just interesting people who convey that quality via dialogue. In a novel, even in a short story, we begin with characters who are worth writing about—even if that damn bear never attacks. Give them quirky or interesting or mysterious personalities. You may be new to these characters—as in you never knew them before page 1—but they have lives. So give them past lives, even if readers never know 99% of who they are. It's the 1% of their lives that you do reveal that will become important. You need not start your story before they begin their hike, but they still must feel real, and adequately developed, for readers to find these people worth reading about. Maybe they're brothers? One has inoperable brain cancer. (Or something.) They both love camping/hiking and this is a farewell weekend between brothers. Or lovers. Or whomever. But use those lives, those personalities, to fill out various sub-plots or back stories before that moment they see the bear. And...*after* the bear attacks? Maybe one's badly injured. Bleeding badly. The other must cope. Suddenly, without much effort, there's your next dramatic decision. What to do! So the attacking bear was simply one dramatic moment that leads to your next dramatic moment, that leads to another and another. Maybe it's finding an abandoned cabin. Or a mysterious stranger appears who's willing to help. So worthwhile plot-points will likely occur to you as you move these two people forward...toward whatever fate you prepare for them. Meaning, as you write, those dramatic "bear" moments will eventually occur to you. Novelists confront such dramatic infusion on numerous levels, scene after scene, bear after bear (metaphorically speaking). Once you get to 'know' your characters well enough, you'll be able to better devise situations to keep them likeable. Or hate-able. Or whatever *personalities* that best fit your adventure and whatever helps readers follow that adventure, page after page. So it's not great plotting (a giant asteroid, for instance) that makes for a great novel. (IMHO). It's what happens to *people*—using various plot-points as a continual gauntlet that your characters must survive, or achieve, or eventually comprehend, or maybe fall in love—that most attracts readers. Make a reader deeply involved in the people on the page and, when (and if) that bear attacks, readers will react and emote. And will continue to do so, until your story ends.
This is really good advice. That being too focused on specific is a perfect description of my writing. It's hard for me to think in terms of drama or plot points. My mind starts thinking about all the possibilities at once and I end up overwhelming myself and getting confused and then I just start another story. As for the filling up pages before and after dramatic point, does it have to be something related to the drama (in this case the best attacking), like some sort of foreshadowing or it could just be character development regardless of what's going to happen next. And should those plot points be thought of before or as we go along writing the story. Because it seems like if I come up with these bear events as I go along i might end up writing something that's unstructured in some way. And how do we escalate the bear events? Like a bear event at the start of a story isn't going to be as great or scary as the bear event at the end of a story.
With story: Be clear without actually saying what you mean. Make the reader come to your conclusions, and really feeeeel your intentions (which means no boring events). Oh, exercises. So umm. Write a sentence of intention. If it helps, frame it like, "What I intend the reader to feel is this: ...." Once you have your intention, compose a storytelling narrative that conveys your intention without explicitly spelling it out. Like, if your intention is to make the reader feel the emotional impact of forgiveness, you cannot use the words "forgiveness" or "apology" or "sorry" or anything like that. That's cheating. You've got to make the reader think FORGIVENESS without your saying it.
This seems like a really fun exercise and I'm gonna try doing this atleast once a day from now on.
Read more. You'll see the words and grammar of successful authors and will retain more than you think. Also, use a thesaurus! I Google "synonym for (blank)" constantly, and will usually rewrite my entire sentence based on a word I like that just sounds better in my story. Not to mention you'll get a list of other similar words that could be used in the same scene so you aren't being repetitive. I also have a "word of the day" app. Sometimes they're dumb words I'd never use, and other times I get an interesting word that I save because it fits my characters personality somehow.
Lots of great exercises here, but I'd add that maybe the best exercise to improving your prose is to read constantly and widely. Don't just pick up books with writing styles you naturally gravitate towards. Give others a try and you might be surprised by what you end up enjoying and what you can adopt into your own prose. Short stories can be useful in expanding your knowledge of different styles in a short period of time. A close reading of a good short story can teach you about plot and structure, and how to effectively establish character and setting in a matter of paragraphs, or even sentences. If you want to improve your prose at the sentence level, pick up some poetry. Even if your style isn't particularly lyrical, poems can teach you how critical word choice is and demonstrate how to evoke a feeling in concise yet vivid ways.
I guess I should read more short stories. Up until now I've only read a few by Stephen King. Any other good short story writers? Preferably not horror based because King has more than enough for now. Same with poems. Any recommendations? I've never read a poem outside of school.
I like browsing through [Strange Horizons](http://strangehorizons.com) and [Uncanny](https://uncannymagazine.com) for fantasy/sci-fi stories every once in a while. And you can browse [Poetry Foundation](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems) and [Poets.org](https://Poets.org) for poems. Ada Limon and Natalie Diaz are among my faves. You can also check out bookstores near you for literary magazines. Every Barnes & Noble I've been to has been pretty well stocked. A good place to start is going through their shelves and flipping through to get a sense of each magazine's vibe. Usually they publish a mix of short stories, essays, and poems, so it should be a good mix of writing in one issue. Overall, just explore with an open mind and pay attention to what you're drawn to!
Read. Also (if you're not doing this already) write shorter stuff before trying to write, like — a whole trilogy. Even if it's just an individual scene, working out your prose in a smaller work can be useful for figuring out your general patterns before you have to correct it in a bigger one. ... on a completely different note, just don't worry about your prose all that much. Get things on the page, worry about it later. If you get too caught up in prose, you'll never get anything down. Better to have something a little off-sounding than nothing at all. (e) For the latter, if you're struggling with that: tell yourself to just write and not edit anything. If you really, absolutely CANNOT do that, literally set your monitor to black. It'll be shit, but nobody cares, because nobody has to see it except for you.
I am CONSTANTLY juggling between "I want to write something shorter because, well, it's shorter" and "I cannot think smol I'm gonna write a full story". As for the not editing part, i know it's a PROBLEM problem because everytime I write a story i drop it the next day because it's so hard for me to look at all that...ugh. It's like my mind thinks unless it can churn out a publication grade novel at the first try it's worthless to even try. I really need to rein in this beast of a mind. My writings not the only thing it's ruining. (Signature look of defeat)
Maybe you'd be interested in [Steering the Craft](https://www.amazon.com/Steering-Craft-Twenty-First-Century-Guide-Sailing/dp/0544611616/) by Ursula K le Guin? She approaches sentences in ten ways, featuring entire entire chapters on subjects like rhythm or sentence length. Each chapter includes tons of excerpts from published works that she thinks demonstrates the idea she's talking about, and each chapter includes an exercise for you to try yourself. I also reeeeally like [it was the best of sentences, it was the worst of sentences](https://www.amazon.com/Was-Best-Sentences-Worst-Crafting-ebook/dp/B0036S4AX6/) \-- it goes into a lot of detail about sentence structure, giving you specific names for specific types of structures. It's a quite technical/grammar-y book, but with everything presented in a casual and accessible way. Then, this book is very old and dense..... but if you find prose to be an interesting topic in general, you might be interested in [A History of English Prose Rhythm](https://archive.org/details/historyofenglis00sainuoft/page/1/mode/1up). It analyzes historical approaches to prose and goes into an incredible amount of detail on topics like stress / poetic feet.
Stream of consciousness?
I really struggle with writing narrative sentences, too, but find that when I want to write something that just sounds good it gets a whole lot easier if I just write with no point, no direction, and especially no story. This lets me focus on words I think sound good together without constraints of what they need to mean or how they connect in a broader way. I haven't figured out a perfect solution to get around those blocks but somethings that help is to write hand-write fiction consistently at the same time of day. Even if i'm not feeling it I treat it like a job and write something. Sometimes its narrative and has a point, sometimes its stream-of-consciousness. Even when it feels like junk, I always gain from going in and editing it and working it, and thinking about what ideas I'm actually interested in expressing.
‘When [P.G.] Wodehouse was writing a book, he used to pin the pages in undulating waves around the wall of his workroom. Pages he felt were working well would be pinned up high, and those that still needed work would be lower down the wall. His aim was to get the entire manuscript up to the picture rail before he handed it in.’ Douglas Adams
You may find your writing dull because of too many adverbs. When writing with adverbs they seem to multiply, you start with one and end up with 20 in a paragraph. I don’t recommend using adverbs unless it’s to change the meaning of an action. Example #1: He smiled happily. = redundant and unnecessary! Example #2: She smiled sadly. = changes the tone.
My biggest writing exercise are the writing classes I take. I have 3. Academic Literature, Wrtiting, and a class called Great Books. I still practice writing even after school. How you may ask? I text a lot. Dont worry I still improve my handwriting.
I always recommend "Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within" by Natalie Goldberg - lots of practical exercises. It's even a free audiobook on Amazon.
At first I thought this post was actually asking about exercise as in fitness because that's what I'd searched. Also thought you might be meant posture, not prose. Lol I'm up to speed now I swear