This morning I reviewed J.D. Robb/Nora Roberts’s mystery Memory in Death. One of the things that immediately struck me when I read the opening was how over-the-top it was:

Death was not taking a holiday. New York may have been decked out in its glitter and glamour, madly festooned in December of 2059, but Santa Claus was dead. And a couple of his elves weren’t looking so good.

A page or two in, however, it was also clear that the over-the-top style was utterly deliberate—and equally fun. It was enjoyable to just let go of preconceived notions of what’s now considered trite or overly florid, and simply enjoy something larger-than-life.

Today, pick a genre that has—or at some point has had—a style or set of conventions that would now be considered over-the-top, and write a scene, page, or some other short piece in that style. Instead of trying to write it without those conventions, dive head-first into them. Indulge gleefully. Have fun with it, and try to let that sense of fun show in the result!

Write with curiosity

I got the idea for today’s exercise when I was reading Bibliolatry’s review of Immortal. The character at the center of this novel is, as the title implies, immortal, but he doesn’t know why. The reviewer spends some entertaining moments pondering what she’d really do with her days if she were immortal, and that led me to this.

Today, imagine you (or a fictional character of your creation) are immortal—you do not age and cannot die of natural causes. You or your character has been alive for at least several hundred years.

Put aside grand plans, twisted plots, and questions of how and why you came to be immortal, and focus on one single day. Wake up at the start of the character’s day, free-write through the course of it, and end at the end of it. What is a typical day like for this immortal?

I’M DEAD
I just wear it well

I’ve read several self-help books by authors with psychology backgrounds that contend that people who focus daily on the things that make them thankful or grateful tend to be happier. (Authentic Happiness; The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die) For today’s exercise, do one of the following:

• Free-write on this topic—whether it makes sense to you, why or why not, etc.
• Journal your own list of what you have to feel grateful or thankful for.
• Journal such a list (or write as an internal monologue) from the point of view of a fictional character, preferably a character from your own writing that you’d like to explore a bit more.
• Examine how the presence or lack (or perceived presence or lack) of things to be grateful for can motivate a fictional character.

If you think of another variation on the theme to play with, feel free to post it as a comment!

Word Nerd

Since I was recently reading (and just reviewed) Dara Girard’s The Writer Behind the Words, I have ‘the writer’s life’ on the brain. So today we have a meta-exercise. Free-write a list of emotions that get in the way of your achieving your writing goals. Pick the one that you think blocks you the most, and free-write about how it impacts you and what you might do to work with or around it.

Today, take a look at the following depiction of mother, or madame, nature. Write a brief scene with her as a character, preferably told from the first person (her point of view) or second (someone with her). Or, free-write or journal about this depiction of Mother Nature and what it means to you.

You might also counter this depiction of Mother Nature with one of your own, describing how you see her or, if you have artistic skills, depicting her in your own manner. How does your depiction contrast or compare with the one below? Why is it different or similar? What do you like or dislike about the original below, and why do you have your own, separate take on things?

Madam Nature by *CrisVector on deviantART

Quick! Without thinking, pick one of the choices in each of the following sets (or some subset thereof), and then write a paragraph as to why you chose each one:

• Ninja, or pirate?
• Glass, or plastic?
• Hardwood, or carpet?
• Plastic, or paper?
• Chocolate, or vanilla?
• Television, or books?

In the spirit of Bill James’s Wolves of Memory, here’s a particularly tricky exercise for you today. In my review of that book I said:

Bill James fascinates me as an author. He does several things I’m not accustomed to seeing and makes them work so beautifully it’s amazing to behold. Very few things actually seem to happen in his books, and yet it doesn’t matter. Most of the story takes place in people’s heads. Even action-filled events are told as recollections, something that in most authors’ hands would rob them of their power and energy. And yet what really drives James’s books are the internal workings of the characters, who are so fascinating that you don’t mind and even vastly prefer spending whole chapters inside their oh-so-bizarre heads.

Today, write a full page of internal monologue from the point of view of a fictional character (preferably one of your own, but you could use another author’s character if you don’t have one of your own to work with). Try to make it quirky, memorable and fascinating. Try to make it say a lot about the character without simply droning on about the character directly.

Since J.K. Rowling made her controversial announcement that Dumbledore is gay, many people have been arguing over what ‘right’ an author has to determine the facts of his or her world beyond what’s written in their books. I was over at It’s my blog and I’ll say what I want to (may have mildly NSFW language here and there) this morning and came across Can an author ever truly own her characters? In it Karen Scott responds to another blogger’s questions over whether an author truly does have the ‘right’ to do whatever he or she wants to their worlds and characters:

My answer is that although the author creates the characters, I don’t think she solely owns them. Of course she can do with them what she wants, she has the pen after all, but I think she does owe some consideration to the fans.

Now I’m not saying she should write to please her readers because that would just be crazy talk, but I do think she has a duty of care to the people who buy her books, to ensure that she doesn’t irreparably damage her characters, or totally change who they are.

I have a take on this that comes at the issue from a slightly different direction. Here’s the comment I left on that blog post:

Rather than feeling the writer has an obligation to the fans or readers, I tend to feel the writer has an obligation to the work. E.g., you don’t kill off a character ‘just because you can,’ because that isn’t being true to the work. You don’t have the characters act out of character because that isn’t being true to the work.

I don’t think the writer ‘owns’ the characters, but I’m thinking in a slightly different way than perhaps that implies. Each reader brings his or her own impressions to a work—his own interpretations, visualizations, nuances, etc. To my mind, by the time they’re done reading the book, what they’ve experienced isn’t exactly what the author thought they were putting on paper—it’s more of a jointly-created entity that the author could never entirely predict or shape. And that’s where things get tricky.

I wouldn’t mind Rowling clarifying that Dumbledore was gay if the issue came up, for example, as a possible interpretation of material she’d written, but I just don’t see any point in ‘announcing’ it—it isn’t part of the work in that way.

Rather, when most authors want to explore some part of their world that they haven’t yet, they traditionally do it by either writing a new book or publishing a short story somewhere, possibly on their website if they just want to get the story out there. They don’t generally do it by saying, “oh, by the way, that character’s gay.” Just as we need the proper build-up in a story in order to believe and buy into an unexpected character revelation, we need it to be couched in story in the first place in order to buy into it! Simply announcing such a detail is rather like handing us a two-page synopsis instead of a novel and telling us that’s the story, enjoy.

Today, journal about your own take on the complex issue of ‘ownership’ of a work between author and reader.

Earlier today I wrote a blog post dealing with the definition of horror fiction. Read it, and then write, outline, or brainstorm a horror story in which not a single drop of blood is shed, and that in no way fits into the “gross-out” portion of the horror genre. Write a purely psychological, chilling, creepy, or horror-by-implication piece.

Here’s an exercise you can either apply to yourself (by journaling on it) or to a character as a way to explore your fictional characters. As quickly as you can (so as to limit careful conscious thought), list out five major ambitions you have. These can be personal, spiritual, material, interpersonal… anything. They can seem as large or as small as you like, as realistic or unrealistic, as long as they’re major to you.

Next, free-write about why these are so important to you.

If you’d like a continuation exercise for another day, pick one ambition you’d like to actually see come to fruition and brainstorm ways to make that happen. Free-write, thought-bubble… use any technique you can to get ideas out there on the page. Some odd and surprising things might result!