Writing is a complicated matter and, possibly, not accessible to everyone. The sense of syllable, rhythm, style can hardly be learned, it can hardly be comprehended. This is the so-called talent, a feature that is given to a person at birth. However, even talent is worthless without due diligence and aspiration. It cannot completely replace the need for hard and painstaking work. Therefore, to develop the skills of beautiful writing, special exercises for writers have long been invented.
Building a plot from a photograph
Of course, the features of the author's style, a beautiful and attractive syllable, vivid metaphors, epithets, hyperbolas and other literary paths attract the attention of the reader. Perhaps they even give him aesthetic pleasure. The text should be outwardly pleasant, the literary elements appear to be its necessary component, but the most important thing in it is, nevertheless, its meaning and idea. An effective imagination exercise for writers is to create stories based on randomly selected photographs. You must choose a picture or photograph from which you can grab an interesting story and describe it.
The exercise itself should begin with an initial assessment of the image: to understand what is happening and with whom, in what period of time. Then it’s worth considering what kind of connections there may be between existing objects and characters, what came before them and how events will develop in the future. In order to complicate the task, you can try to write your story in different genres: from drama to comedy, from fantasy to detective story.
Character Work
In the literary work of art all the characters can be divided into two large categories: the deeply worked out and the flat, unpretentious. If the former are usually at the center of events and play the main roles, the latter are needed mainly to convey some ideas, thoughts, to continue or change the plot. Minor characters in any case are considered important in the framework of the storyline. Therefore, such an exercise is proposed: to create a certain sheet, a table of heroes of the work. It is necessary to describe in a couple of sentences their external features, character traits, possible phrases that will appear in the dialogue. To think what role they could play in the work, what to answer and do in a certain situation. Then all the recorded characters can be gradually included in the plot, fill them with the script, developing it.
Sitting in a restaurant or cafe, standing at a bus stop or being in public transport, you should always pay attention to people around you, because all this captured, imprinted variety of behavior, types and speeches will make the story more concentrated and rich. Characters should be described through their own actions. Even from a banal walk, cleaning, cooking, work, you can learn a lot about the character, draw your own conclusions and form an impression of him. The dialogue between the two characters will tell a lot. As a useful exercise for writers, you can make small sketches for a couple of hundred words about the environment in which the character is and which reflects his actions.
Style work
It implies not so much highlighting one's own authorial style (which comes with experience), but rather purifying the literary language from the parts of speech that pollute it. To do this, there is a curious exercise, named after Mark Twain - "By Twain." The writer himself always opposed the excessive use of adjectives and adverbs in the text, because he believed that they blur and make the writing faded. It is worth noting that other writers took a similar opposing position with respect to the indicated parts of speech: Voltaire, E. Hemingway, S. King.
The essence of the exercise is simple and consists in not using adjectives and adverbs when writing artwork for several weeks. The priority parts of speech in the text should be a noun and a verb. After practicing for some time, you can look at the result and evaluate the difference in your work. This exercise for writers can be made a little easier if, for example, there is not enough free time to complete it. It is enough to take your old works and save them from workload with adjectives and adverbs.
Examples of simple and effective exercises
Exercises aimed at developing writing talent, there are more than a hundred. Many of them seem simple at first glance, but in fact, being fast-performing, they improve creativity.
- Stories and monologues. Probably, many have heard of such strange exercises for novice writers as “telling about an empty glass” or about some blue object. An effective training is also writing monologues on behalf of, for example, a spoon that has fallen into the dishwasher, or from the face of a freshly cut flower.
- Keyword stories. Creative thinking can be developed through writing short stories based on random words originally given. They can be from completely different categories: dog, shuttle, ice, well, commander. The more extravagant the story, the better.
- Bringing reasons. How to become a writer? First of all, you need to learn how to answer any questions and give unusual explanations to the most commonplace things. For example, let’s say, as an exercise, one can cite for 8 reasons such situations and events as: an unexpectedly opened door of a house, a school teacher is determined to change his profession to a geologist, a person justifies a liar.
General conclusion
A true writer is inseparable not only from his diverse experience, but also from the ability to think and imagine creatively. Talent, of course, plays an important role in writing, but one who is persistent in his work becomes a real creator. As with athletes, regular exercise for writers is a must. All the time you need to work on plot moments, on the appearance and character of the characters, on the literary and your own authorial style. It will not be superfluous to write short stories or chaotic monologues from time to time. Everything should be aimed at developing style and extraordinary thinking.