Rainbow Words Around The Edges

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting: Fri, 26 Apr 1996 23:05:51 EDT

What's a new world witout a columbus?

It's time for an exercise, time to stretch those little word muscles, think about speling and problems grammar.

Let's start again with a story (poem, essay, etc.) in hand (other extremity or electronic equivalent at your indiscretion:-).

1. Read it out load. Slowly, carefully, knotting which place don't seem right. As you read, mark it down. Scrible alll over where ever somethin seem not good to you ear (oar ice).

2. Fix those palce. Then read it again, looking for rhythm, lookin for rhyme, looking for time, look in for a dime. Play with the words. Let your lips argue with the silly thin thound comin up and out and over the tong.

3. Fix it again. This last time, clean out the silliness, cut out the leftover extras, and make it sing. Get rid of repetititions, watch out for tired phrases (they might fall asleep right there in the middle of your writing, and there you'd be with overworked words exposed to the world--shameful, silly shamus), make those words work.

Try that. Three times--once for the ear, once for the lip-smacking lingual excitation, and once for the purging.

(My apologies--I have been conned into a laptop with windows95 and magic MSWord, and the silly thing has ruined me. It capitalizes, it complains about my misspellings, it even puts my wandering points in some kind of order. Now if we are lucky today, we may manage to send this in almost reasonable shape.)

Starter: (If you want to, start something with this...and go on until you come to an ending.)

"Did you ever notice how loud silence is?" she said.

(tick, tick, tick, tock, tickety tick pock, goes the little clock that stopped...and they're writing!)

Out Of Order

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting: Sat, 20 Apr 1996 00:21:54 EDT

[yipes, it's late, I'm late, all things are late...]

An exercise aimed at revision and editing. So, please start with story, poem, or other effort in hand (screen, foot, paw, whatever, just have the piece already produced).

1. Take the last act/scene/section. Read carefully and slowly.

2. Take the beginning act/scene/section. Read carefully and slowly.

3. Stop. Are there pieces of the ending that could be foreshadowed usefully in the beginning? Are there questions, problems, etc. posed in the beginning that are not answered in the ending? Rework the two pieces paying particular attention to what shows up when they are juxtaposed like this.

4. Now take the intermediate acts/scenes/sections. Read carefully and slowly, alternating later parts and earlier parts, making sure the whole meshes and resonates.

5. (Extra credit) Take every main character. Use a colored pen or other highlighting tool and mark every mention of one character. Now read just the parts concerned with this character, especially noting the dialogue that this character speaks. Make sure they have a way of speaking that suits them. Repeat for each main character. Make sure each one is personally consistent and notably different from the other characters.

That's about all for today. Slice and dice, toss and review, and see if your editing doesn't improve.

One sentence starters?

In the end, he knew better. But now, he knew what he wanted and took it.

(and they're off, whacking those words in line, pounding in the periods and spearing attention on exclamation points, hooking the reading eyeballs with little question marks, a sprinkle of colons, and the common grist of commas...:-)