Category Archives: Writing tools

Let’s look at a few pages from Stanley Fish’s How to Write a Sentence.

From The 3AM Epiphany by Brian Kiteley, this exercise is called “Outrunning the Critic.” I’ve summarized it here: Write one hundred short sentences about a character in a piece of your fiction. Don’t lift your fingers from your keyboard for all one hundred … Continue reading →

From Brian Kiteley’s excellent book The 3A.M. Epiphany, you’ll find this exercise useful.

Address these questions: How do your characters act in the face of opposition/desires that contrast with their own? Do they plan, try to persuade, take physical action, for example? Describe three events that your central character remembers and that influence … Continue reading →

I found this exercise useful when trying to create characters. From Alice LaPlante’s Method and Madness, here is the PDF.

Look at this view of Cinderella, from Janet Burroway’s Writing Fiction. Consider also these contrasting views of conflict and connection when plotting/characterizing, which are also from Burroway’s book.

“So it’s always critical to keep in mind that there are no rules in fiction, only conventions that have been built up over the years based on the way that writers have crafted their stories. (A convention is ‘an established … Continue reading →

An exercise by Donald Barthelme Assignment: Write a sentence with some attention to the notes below. What can we reasonable expect, or even demand, of the sentences in fiction? The first thing I want a sentence to do is surprise … Continue reading →