Category Archives: Writing

exercise, inspiration, Writing

Writing exercise – get out of your comfort zone

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October’s meeting ended, appropriately, with a writing exercise.

  1. In an effort to get us out of our comfort zones, Sheila asked for fourteen random nouns. We came up with:

Spaceship, spade, owl, truck, flag, tree, shirt, car, custard, chocolate, witch, airplane, Starbucks, and woman.

  1. With the current contest in mind, we were then asked to imagine a character and hiding place, then list fourteen more nouns: two for each of our character’s senses – sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, bodily feelings, and emotion.
  2. Finally, we were asked to pair up seven of these with seven from the first list of nouns, to create metaphors which we could use in a poem or description of a scene.
  3. Sample metaphors include: “The flapping flag of pride” “The chocolate voice of desire” “The warm air’s comfortable shirt against his skin” “the lumpy custard of the sagging mattress” etc.

If you weren’t there, or even if you were, why not give this a try to get your creative juices flowing.

inspiration, marketing

Marketing isn’t just about selling books

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taken from Sheila’s talk in May 2014

Why should we care about marketing?

Quite a few people wanted a talk on marketing, but I’m guessing the rest of you might think, I don’t want to sell stuff, I’m just writing for me. Why do I care about marketing? But marketing isn’t just getting your book into stores and selling lots of copies. It’s also what you’re doing when:

  1. You tell your grandkids, “You should care about this; it’s your family history”
  2. You tell your spouse, “No, I’m not wasting my time”
  3. You tell yourself, “I know what I’m doing and I’m going to get this thing written.”

A marketing exercise for everyone Continue reading Marketing isn’t just about selling books →

exercise, plot, Writing

Plot a Mystery

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Plot a mystery

  1. Imagine you want to write a mystery. Who is your main character?
  2. Where is your main character?
  3. Your next nine answers should form a mystery story. At number one, how would you introduce the character and place?
  4. At number nine how would your story end? Does your MC ride off into the sunset, or jetski into space, or…?
  5. At number five, what crisis or mystery would you like your character to solve?
  6. At number seven, how would a second crisis grow from the first one, making it a mystery that really has to be solved?
  7. At three, how might your character end up in a place where he/she/it would encounter the mystery?
  8. At two, why would your character end up there?
  9. At four, give the character a need to care.
  10. At six, show how one crisis turned into another.
  11. And at eight, tell how the crisis was resolved by your character before the ending.