This summer, I’m taking a creative writing class under the guidance of Ursula Le Guin’s Steering the Craft. It’s a refreshing return to the basics of language – facets of English I’ve long taken for granted, used, forgotten, and am ready to relearn.
One of my most important takeaways so far is the importance of reading your work out loud. Try it – it sounds totally different than it does in your head. Reading silently all the time, we forget the sound that saying something softly then LOUDLY can make. For dialogue especially; but narration, too.
I spent the entirety of last weekend reading my novel manuscript out loud, and it wasn’t until Sunday afternoon that my husband asked, "Is everything okay?"
...even if I sound crazy, though, I’m enjoying this return to basics; and I thought I’d share some of the exercises I’ve been doing for my class. Each of the exercises below is based on a prompt and took approximately five minutes to write. You can see how changes in the sentence structure and playing with techniques like rhyme and rhythm impact the meaning and feeling you get from each piece.
And if you’re like me, reading and rereading your work to the point you begin to believe words are the enemy, it’s worth taking a break to play with the dear little things. Get to know them a bit better. Thanks to Ursula, words and I are on better terms now.
So, if you’re in need of some inspiration, I highly recommend giving these (or similar) exercises a try. Enjoy!
PROMPT: Julia, twelve years old, is at a family gathering. There’s a small, shiny object that she wants, and she only has a couple of minutes to try and steal it.
Exercise #1 (5 minutes): Write about this situation using sentences no more than 7 words in length.
Julia wants that pin. She backs out of the kitchen. The adults are still talking. They don’t notice her leave. She pretends to be distracted. Says her cat’s name. Her mom calls for her. She pretends not to hear. The jacket is on the coat rack. It’s underneath some other coats. She has to dig for it. Her mom calls again. She wants her to set the table. Julia digs through the jackets. She’s got the right one. Where is the pin? It was on the breast pocket. It’s not there anymore! Her palms are sweating. Her fingers brush against the metal. Hands are shaking. She can’t get ahold of it. She squeezes the back. It won’t come loose. “Julia!” her mom yells. She’s slipped off the back. The pin falls to the floor! It’s next to the vent. “JULIA!” Her mom is in the foyer. Walking over. Julia holds the back of the pin. Her mom grabs her arm. She pulls her into the kitchen.
…see how these short, choppy sentences give the reader a feeling of urgency?
By contrast, lengthening your sentences will achieve the opposite effect. Let’s say you really want to dwell on something and slow down the pace. To do this, and avoid run-on sentences, you'll have to befriend the semicolon, colon, and dash. Like many writers, I use all these forms of punctuation frequently; but I almost never stop to think about what they mean.
For reference: the purpose of a colon is to introduce or list information. A semicolon joins two independent clauses; this is done in a way that both sounds formal and creates a single, cohesive sentence. A dash – my favorite – can be used in a similar way to both a colon or a semicolon to create more emphasis, to abruptly change the subject, or in place of parentheses. It is also considered less formal than the others.
When you read the below, you can decide if I’ve used each of these types of punctuation correctly to form a single, long, and grammatically correct sentence.
Exercise #2 (5 minutes): Now Julia’s at the dinner table. Describe what she observes, going round the dinner table, including as much description as possible in a single sentence.
Mom is already on her second glass of wine, that we all know is one too many; Dad is leaning forward on his chair, elbows on his knees, hands on his mouth and staring intently into the eyes of Trevor, interrogating him as he always does with guests; Sam is muttering to himself, reliving the same incident over and over that none of us have yet to uncover – Trevor’s wife is trying her best to be polite by ignoring him, by making comments about the wine, while her bratty son whose name I’ve forgotten tries to get her attention – although if I were her I wouldn’t give him attention, either; and then there’s Allie: she’s happy since SHE got a present, but only because she plays soccer and Trevor couldn’t think of what to get the rest of us, including me, not that I’m bitter about it.
…whew! Try reading that out loud all in one breath.
Now for my favorite and final exercise: in class, we read a children’s story called The World is Round by Gertrude Stein (a contemporary of and mentor to Ernest Hemingway). If you’ve never read it, it’s kind of like Dr. Seuss meets the way a four-year-old might tell you a story. In it, Stein makes use of techniques such as rhyme, rhythm, and repetition. She avoids punctuation like the plague. It’s a terribly fun read-aloud.
One of the best ways to learn to write can be through imitation. There’s nothing wrong with imitating the style of a writer you love, and over time, making it your own. For example, one of my favorite pieces I ever wrote is an imitation sequel to “Lafcadio the Lion” by Shel Silverstein in third grade.
So give this one a try. To get the full effect, you really do have to read it out loud (and put some spice into it, if you can):
Exercise #3 (5 minutes): Rewrite Exercise #1, but this time, imitating the style of The World is Round by Gertrude Stein (any sentence length).
Julie wants to win the pin she thinks the pin is in and she wants it in her shirt so her shirt has the pin instead of the shirt it’s in. So she walks towards the coats on the rack and looks for the coat on the rack that has the pin in it. Her cat is near the rack making a racket so she asks him to leave and her mom is in the kitchen making a racket but she can’t ask her to leave because she has to leave her be but she does wish her mom would leave her be. She believes she will win the pin so she catches the coat and digs not like a cat because cats don’t dig. And she finds the pin on the coat on the rack and her mom is still making a racket, but she’s here instead of leaving, and the pin is separating instead of staying in and now it’s on the floor. But she doesn’t want it anymore.
Writing this last exercise gave me a new appreciation of the beauty of some children’s books. And it made me think, that’s the way we all learned to read, isn’t it? Almost entirely based on sound, through stories meant to be read aloud.
…well, I hope you enjoyed these exercises as much as I did – at least reading them! And if you’re interested in improving your writing, I do ** strongly ** recommend checking out Le Guin’s Steering the Craft for some extra pointers, regardless of your writing skill.
Sometimes, going back to basics can be refreshing, like a jump in the ocean to take a break from trying to steer that pesky craft...
