Over the past few weeks I’ve been following the Writing Challenges from the University of Warwick (UK). Having just finished the Humber College (Canada) writing program I wanted to keep going with instructions and challenges to keep my work fresh.
David Morley, Director of the Warwick Writing Programme, conducts the podcasts. If there are any writers out there looking for practical creative challenges to free up their writing habits, I would recommend these podcasts.
Since most of them are about free writing, where you take an inspirational word or phrase and just write without thinking for five minutes or so, the challenges feel very meditative to me. It’s difficult to try and not go back and edit, or to just write something without pondering it first. However, if you’re able to let go it’s quite an exhilarating feeling.
One particular challenge: Play, Pleasure and Games, requires you to do the five minute free writing after which, you then reread the work forward and backward. You underline any words and phrases that have energy, surprise and/or haven’t been written before. From there, you gather those words and phrases and write a story or poem. I have found that exercise to be very helpful in having me break out of some habits, and to trigger a branch of new thoughts and imagination.
These podcasts are valuable in that they actually get me writing.
To build a strong base of knowledge, there are countless books on writing out there. It’s difficult to find the ones that are the most helpful, and attempting to read too many can also divert you from writing.
Here are my book suggestions for those interested in prose.
Writing Prose – Techniques and Purposes, Kane and Peters, Oxford Press
- this text is extremely thorough and covers all aspects of writing using selections from literature’s greatest.
Aspects of the Novel, E.M. Forster
- if you’re writing a novel and haven’t read this, please try and read this book before going back to your novel. It was first published in 1927 but the aspects of a novel Forster writes about are timeless. I found this more valuable than I had expected to.
Writing Fiction, A Guide to Narrative Craft, Burroway and Stuckey-French
- Like Writing Prose this book covers all aspects for the writer and offers practical challenges. Some of the writing samples I wasn’t particularly interested in but that doesn’t take away from the book’s value.
Characters and Viewpoint, Orson Scott Card
- Mr. Card has written, to me, one of THE most interesting characters in literature, Ender. So to me he would most certainly be the one who could teach other writers about character development. My writing tends to fall into the habit of shifting POV. This book has a very good chapter covering point of view.
Aristotle’s Poetics.
- This covers the basic structure of archetypes, three act structure plot, spectacle and pathos, the books I’ve mentioned earlier expand and develop those basics in much more detail but this is essential.
Filed under: Observation, writing | Tagged: writing
