Monday, 5 April 2010
I didn't bother with yesterday's round up since I only restarted the blog on Thursday but I will update my word count in a moment.
So with that out of the way, on to today's book review, which is "The 3am Epiphany - Uncommon Writing Exercises" by Brian Kiteley.
I haven't had the opportunity to try too many of the exercises yet but I have skimmed it (i.e. I read the introductions and then have read random exercises from various points in the book because I don't have the patience to approach this logically) and it's interesting. Unlike some of the other books of inspiration I've written about this isn't a collection of prompts; it is very definitely a set of exercises.
The exercises are definitely far more interesting than some I've seen. There's very little chance of these exercises boring you as with some books and that's obviously an advantage because you're not going to stick with the book if you're bored. And as well as the 200 exercises there are suggestions for combining exercises or using the results of the exercises together in unusual ways to try and create a story.
Now, onto the exercises themselves. I'm going to give a couple of examples of the things you can find in this book although the exercises themselves are so varied it is hard to represent the full 200 with just one or two. However, hopefully this will give you a flavour of what's within and make you want to read more.
Found History. Browse through old copies of magazines and newspapers to look at the advertising, crime stories, and obituaries. Or try to find actual artifacts from history - ticket stubs, letters, postcards written in 1913 (you can find these very easily in antique stores). Search for something that grabs your attention. Find a piece of history in the margins of this sort of material. Use two unrelated objects or texts in the story you tell. Connect the dots. 500 words.
Accidental or found material like this can be very inspiring; it often catches you off guard. You think you're looking for one thing - especially if you're actually researching a project and you're looking for, say, court documents from a sensational murder in 1810 - but you stumble on a fascinating character who has nothing, or little, to do with the case. What do you do with her? The key to this kind of research is to keep an open mind and a sharp eye for telling details.
The Team. Examine a group of people that are part of a team. Don't show us their actual sports activity (game or practice time). Don't even tell us what they play. Show us only their lives off the field, away from the coaches and the crowds. Show us how these people are tied together - the ridiculous and moving bonds of something other than friendship - team spirit, esprit de corps, hatred of other teams. The idea of this exercise is to study the way people create group relationships - the invisible web of commitments and hierarchies. 500 words.
Think about the difference between paid athletes and amateur athletes (high school or college teams, although many would dispute that college sports like football and basketball are unpaid). How does exploring group relationships help your fiction? Large coherent groups are quite common, but they are difficult to describe. Dome films use a herd of characters as the centre of action stories, like The Fugitive and Twister, where a group of five or six actors tag along with a main character or characters. We do not necessarily know their names, but the group ethic is important for the way the story progresses. These characters are defined in fundamentally different ways than individual single characters are defined. We see and hear, first and foremost, the group dynamic, the skills each has, and the chatter.
As you can see each exercise comes with at least a paragraph of description after it talking about the issues that the exercise is designed to examine. Each chapter also has a prologue which discusses the theme of that chapter and what the author thinks we can learn from it.
I think this book will keep my attention and the exercises look like they could produce some interesting results so I'm definitely giving this one a thumbs up. Definitely worth the cover price.
So with that out of the way, on to today's book review, which is "The 3am Epiphany - Uncommon Writing Exercises" by Brian Kiteley.
I haven't had the opportunity to try too many of the exercises yet but I have skimmed it (i.e. I read the introductions and then have read random exercises from various points in the book because I don't have the patience to approach this logically) and it's interesting. Unlike some of the other books of inspiration I've written about this isn't a collection of prompts; it is very definitely a set of exercises.
The exercises are definitely far more interesting than some I've seen. There's very little chance of these exercises boring you as with some books and that's obviously an advantage because you're not going to stick with the book if you're bored. And as well as the 200 exercises there are suggestions for combining exercises or using the results of the exercises together in unusual ways to try and create a story.
Now, onto the exercises themselves. I'm going to give a couple of examples of the things you can find in this book although the exercises themselves are so varied it is hard to represent the full 200 with just one or two. However, hopefully this will give you a flavour of what's within and make you want to read more.
Found History. Browse through old copies of magazines and newspapers to look at the advertising, crime stories, and obituaries. Or try to find actual artifacts from history - ticket stubs, letters, postcards written in 1913 (you can find these very easily in antique stores). Search for something that grabs your attention. Find a piece of history in the margins of this sort of material. Use two unrelated objects or texts in the story you tell. Connect the dots. 500 words.
Accidental or found material like this can be very inspiring; it often catches you off guard. You think you're looking for one thing - especially if you're actually researching a project and you're looking for, say, court documents from a sensational murder in 1810 - but you stumble on a fascinating character who has nothing, or little, to do with the case. What do you do with her? The key to this kind of research is to keep an open mind and a sharp eye for telling details.
The Team. Examine a group of people that are part of a team. Don't show us their actual sports activity (game or practice time). Don't even tell us what they play. Show us only their lives off the field, away from the coaches and the crowds. Show us how these people are tied together - the ridiculous and moving bonds of something other than friendship - team spirit, esprit de corps, hatred of other teams. The idea of this exercise is to study the way people create group relationships - the invisible web of commitments and hierarchies. 500 words.
Think about the difference between paid athletes and amateur athletes (high school or college teams, although many would dispute that college sports like football and basketball are unpaid). How does exploring group relationships help your fiction? Large coherent groups are quite common, but they are difficult to describe. Dome films use a herd of characters as the centre of action stories, like The Fugitive and Twister, where a group of five or six actors tag along with a main character or characters. We do not necessarily know their names, but the group ethic is important for the way the story progresses. These characters are defined in fundamentally different ways than individual single characters are defined. We see and hear, first and foremost, the group dynamic, the skills each has, and the chatter.
As you can see each exercise comes with at least a paragraph of description after it talking about the issues that the exercise is designed to examine. Each chapter also has a prologue which discusses the theme of that chapter and what the author thinks we can learn from it.
I think this book will keep my attention and the exercises look like they could produce some interesting results so I'm definitely giving this one a thumbs up. Definitely worth the cover price.
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