#ksw exercise

[wondertowords]

Crafting a Strong Character Voice // Part One

Exercise One - Me

They were mountains. I knew they were. You could tell by their jagged cliff faces. The deepening of valleys and the rising of peaks. Like the crinkled surface of a scrunched up piece of paper once it's been flattened out. 

If they didn't look so dusted in saw dust and speckled with black dots of mould, I could've been convinced otherwise. Maybe if it'd been spread with dark blue icing and sprinkled with white, fluffy fairy floss, I'd instead assume it was the ocean. Cool and inviting, waiting to welcome me into it's expanding weightlessness.

Exercise Two - Theron

The only thing that rendered familiar was the rich, royal blue sky, that deepened in colour the more I looked upwards, towards space. The mountains were the flattest I've ever seen, even more so than the ones that expanded out into the fields in the East Region. They looked futile, and while from this distance all I can see is sand, I wouldn't surprised if I came across clusters of dried, perishing bones.

Deirdre's breaths tickle against my neck, growing faster and more desperate. I tighten my grip on her waist as we begin to descend across the flat plain. While the level ground works in our favour, it's cracked soil reaffirms that finding water is going to be our greatest problem. 

Exercise Three - Evita

I stamp my foot into the slippery sand, taking one last push so I can finally see what lays on the other side. I try to imagine the city that once flourished, clusters of glass buildings expanding for miles. I've always been told it was a beautiful place, but with every photo of it being destroyed in the war, I've never seen it for myself. It's always sound, luxurious, a place that I could call home and honestly mean it, but with the heat that's pounding my skin and the glaring sun that burns my eyes, I'm starting to believe its grandeur was being amplified.

I'm almost relieved when I don't see the blinding sun reflecting off the glass walls. Almost. The reality of what lays ahead begins to sink in though. Just more and more of what we've already seen. More of nothing. A scorched plain outstretches briefly ahead of us. Just after, a wave of mountains barely threaten to obscure the horizon, but they look even more dire then the deserted climbs we've just endured.

[weleaveshadows]

ksw exercise - making description work harder

ay I wanted to practice writing so here I am 

I went with the room/closet idea so yeah

-

She reaches into the closet with one hand leaning on the wood of the clothes rod as it creaks, glaring at the hangers as they’re pushed apart with a screech by her other strong hand in a rainbow of colors. She lets out a huff of breath and shakes her hand, then slips it under a metal hook at random and hopes that the shirt won’t fall off from the movement. It does, and it falls to the floor in a splash of air With a exaggerated groan, she returns the hanger, and then keeps holding onto the rod as she bends down, trying not to hit - and trying to ignore - the unopened boxes to the side, sliding her toes across soft carpeting. In a swipe of her hand, she moves the shirt’s hem to her mouth and bites off the tag, throws it in the garbage can to the side, and tosses the shirt over her back after swinging the nonexistent dust off. She sways as she walks to the bathroom.

[keyboardsmashwriters]

Crafting a Strong Character Voice || FINAL Exercise – Take an old scene that you’ve already written. Rewrite it. Goal – Becoming a better writer means writing, and writing a lot, and it also often means writing with the clear intention of honing a particular skill. Once you’ve completed the past six exercises, that’s progress you’ve made that you wouldn’t have had otherwise. So, apply it now. Take an old scene, or take a scene that you haven’t written yet but had intended to. Write it now that you’ve strengthened your tools of character voice. One of the best markers of progress is to look back at old writing and cringe. Sure, you might have a line or two that you still really love – but cringing is a good thing. It means you’ve made progress. Every bit of progress, no matter how small, still puts you ahead of where you were before.

Share your pieces, however perfect or raw, with other KSWers by posting under the “ksw exercise” tag!

If you missed an exercise, here they all are:

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

[keyboardsmashwriters]

Crafting a Strong Character Voice || Part 6 Exercise 1 – Take the above photo. Describe it with your own style and your own literary flair. Bring the scene to life. Give it its own characterization. Capture a moment. Exercise 2 – Now, describe the scene from the eyes of one of your characters. Don’t be afraid to borrow those moments of gold you write in exercise 1, but make sure to stay absolutely true and honest to the voice of the character. Bonus – Describe the scene from the eyes of the protagonist. Goal – A big part of what makes a story stand out is character voice. Your own personal style changes as you do, and a character’s voice changes as the character does. When the two come together, there’s potential for literary magic, but bringing out and differentiating between different character voices takes lots of practice and even more reading. Write for yourself, but also take time to write with the intention of improving skills. There’s reading for pleasure, and then there’s reading like a writer. The same applies to writing: write for pleasure, then write to improve. Experiment in these exercises. Try things you haven’t tried before. Remember, the image is meant to generate ideas, so it’s intentionally vague. If you’re not used to writing about the subjects in the image, good. Write something you’ve never written before. Push yourself. Need some help? Check out the guide on character voice, or look at the Voice & Style Summer Camp exercises for additional tips! Share your pieces, however perfect or raw, with other KSWers by posting under the “ksw exercise” tag! Need an Example? Here’s a Poor One PLUS BONUS –

The shadows turned to phantoms across the street as the sun eased toward the distant hills of the horizon—phantoms that were long and dark like tall figures with hoods pulled over their heads. It was cold without being cold. Bitter wind but warm asphalt beneath my feet, the pavement cracked and broken from tires and torched from sweltering summers. Craters and webs of cracks reminded me of the surface of the moon, broken and lifeless. There were no footprints here, only tire tracks. Big tires. Small tires. Questionable tires. I lifted my hands and shielded my eyes to watch the sun melt the horizon, blistering the blue of the sky to a pale shade of white fire. As the sun sank beyond the hills, creeping slower than a predator through grasslands, an army of phantoms stretched for me, shadows with faces covered by their hoods. Every time I blinked, they were closer.

Exercise 2 –

The rubber tread of my boots scuffed a two-lane street that hardly passed for a street. Broken with craters and rippled from truck and tractor wheels, the sun-bleached street looked closer to the surface of the moon—or at least the part on Google directions that said, “Turn off the paved road.” I faced west and squinted as the sun melted the horizon, burning into the distant hills like wax, blistering the blue of the sky to a pale shade of white fire. The wind tossed my brown hair over my shoulders, the air cool with a whisper of crispness, competing with the leftover heat of the day still wafting off the street beneath me. I closed my eyes, tipped my head back, and breathed it all in. I’d seen so many sunsets, but never two of the same. They were always different.

Bonus –

The wind broke in waves across the shore of my face, chasing the last of the day’s heat into the ground and tossing my dark hair across my chest. Behind me, the sun counted its last seconds on this side of the world. Dusk bloomed. Beautiful. The paint of the lane divider beneath my naked feat had become faint, less and less visible to the average eye as the day faded. There were no lights here. No homes or sanctuaries. Only endless fields and grids of two-lane asphalt passages stretching on into a brief infinity. There was nothing. No one. The shadows of the hills far behind me stretched toward my heels—shadows that were like phantoms. Tall, slender figures growing taller, dressed in black cloaks with hoods pulled over their faces. But I was no different than one of those hidden faces. Sunsets had different meanings for different peoples, after all.

Remember, these are purely examples and not a set of rules to tell anyone the right way to write – there’s no such thing. Take the examples as only one way to approach the exercises. Then, make your own.

[keyboardsmashwriters]

Crafting a Strong Character Voice || Part 5 Exercise 1 – Take the above photo. Describe it with your own style and your own literary flair. Bring the scene to life. Give it its own characterization. Capture a moment. Exercise 2 – Now, describe the scene from the eyes of one of your characters. Don’t be afraid to borrow those moments of gold you write in exercise 1, but make sure to stay absolutely true and honest to the voice of the character. Bonus – Describe the scene from the eyes of the protagonist. Goal – A big part of what makes a story stand out is character voice. Your own personal style changes as you do, and a character’s voice changes as the character does. When the two come together, there’s potential for literary magic, but bringing out and differentiating between different character voices takes lots of practice and even more reading. Write for yourself, but also take time to write with the intention of improving skills. There’s reading for pleasure, and then there’s reading like a writer. The same applies to writing: write for pleasure, then write to improve. Experiment in these exercises. Try things you haven’t tried before. Remember, the image is meant to generate ideas, so it’s intentionally vague. If you’re not used to writing about the subjects in the image, good. Write something you’ve never written before. Push yourself. Need some help? Check out the guide on character voice, or look at the Voice & Style Summer Camp exercises for additional tips! Share your pieces, however perfect or raw, with other KSWers by posting under the “ksw exercise” tag! Need an Example? Here’s a Poor One –

The sleek sand was cold. My naked toes left imprints behind, my signature, the crescent stamps of my seal in wax. But then the water rolled and the wave broke on the shore, crashing against my ankles and melting my seal away. The dark blue water glimmered with specks of gold, and when the waves swelled, the sun made the algae glow. The speckle of shorebirds road the undulations like a seesaw. Up and Down. Up and down. The sound of churning waves and rushing wind had that feeling of omnipresence, of surrounding me. I could close my eyes and pretend I was standing on a tiny isle of rocks with an endless ocean lapping in every direction, instead of with the hundred foot cliff looming behind me. But the whistles and calls of shorebirds reminded me I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t the only pair of feet walking the wet sand. My hair tossed about my shoulders, tangling with a film of ocean spray as my feet carried me to the glistening rocks. Seagulls, picking at a lump of seaweed, hopped away, clearly unamused with my approach.

Exercise 2 –

I hadn’t realized how close I was to the water until the wave broke on the shore and crashed against my ankles. The sting of cold stole the air from my lungs, my flesh prickling with goose bumps. I didn’t know what I had expected. I’d lived my life right on the apex of the cliff behind me, but never once had I put my naked feet in the water. Not willingly. I watched the webs of foam slide away with the water. The ocean wound up a second time for another wave, the swell of water blazing green with sunlit algae. I stooped to let my fingers graze the second rush of water. The sand glimmered like gold around my fingertips as the water stole the foundation out right from beneath my feet, as if to try and carry me away with it. I backed out of the water. The whistles and calls of shorebirds reminded me I wasn’t alone. I shielded my eyes and squinted against the intense rays of sun, studying pelicans gathered atop a cluster of rocks in the distance, wings spread and feathers drying. I studied the seagulls bobbing in the water, riding the undulations like a seesaw. Up and down. And fearless. Why couldn’t the birds be afraid like the rest of us were? Probably because they had wings. They had the freedom to take off into the sky, whereas we had to escape underground. It didn’t really matter in the end, did it? The monsters hiding in the deep never came up for them. Only for us.

Remember, these are purely examples and not a set of rules to tell anyone the right way to write – there’s no such thing. Take the examples as only one way to approach the exercises. Then, make your own.

[keyboardsmashwriters]

So. Quick question about the exercises.

The second to last one is tomorrow already I can't believe it. I finally got myself together and transferred the pictures from my dilapidated old computer to my new one, so, theoretically, I could make additional exercises for this set.

Or, I can let this set conclude on this upcoming Wednesday.

So, what do you all think? Yea or nay?

[keyboardsmashwriters]

Crafting a Strong Character Voice || Part 4 Exercise 1 – Take the above photo. Describe it with your own style and your own literary flair. Bring the scene to life. Give it its own characterization. Capture a moment. Exercise 2 – Now, describe the scene from the eyes of one of your characters. Don’t be afraid to borrow those moments of gold you write in exercise 1, but make sure to stay absolutely true and honest to the voice of the character. Bonus – Describe the scene from the eyes of the protagonist. Goal – A big part of what makes a story stand out is character voice. Your own personal style changes as you do, and a character’s voice changes as the character does. When the two come together, there’s potential for literary magic, but bringing out and differentiating between different character voices takes lots of practice and even more reading. Write for yourself, but also take time to write with the intention of improving skills. There’s reading for pleasure, and then there’s reading like a writer. The same applies to writing: write for pleasure, then write to improve. Experiment in these exercises. Try things you haven’t tried before. Remember, the image is meant to generate ideas, so it’s intentionally vague. If you’re not used to writing about the subjects in the image, good. Write something you’ve never written before. Push yourself. Need some help? Check out the guide on character voice, or look at the Voice & Style Summer Camp exercises for additional tips! Share your pieces, however perfect or raw, with other KSWers by posting under the “ksw exercise” tag! Need an Example? Here’s a Poor One –

The pathway was caged. Wire encased the narrow strip of overgrown walkway between the looming trees, almost like some sort of birdcage. But if this was a birdcage, I was the bird. My feet moved as if I was waiting for one twig to snap, something to set me running back the way I’d come. My hands floated at shoulder height, palms facing the wire, but not touching it. Sometimes I liked to let my fingers graze the wall as I walked, but this wasn’t a wall I wanted to touch. The fencing looked hand-crafted—a long, distorted cage woven from wire strong enough to choke someone. I was afraid to touch it. Afraid it might come alive and wrap a noose around my neck. Something caught my eye. I paused. A leaf, caught between the tangled web, dangled above my head like a fragile Christmas ornament. The leaf was old, shriveled and rigid and long since dead. But it wasn’t the leaf that earned my attention—it was what nestled between the wrinkles. I squinted at the white speck, no bigger than a nickel, and I watched it work its way toward the stem with tiny legs. Delicate wings flattened, fringed at the tips, softer than the flesh of a newborn. All I had to do was breathe too deeply and I set the moth into a flurried escape. A rift of wind between the trees carried the moth between the wire and into the nearby bushes, where it disappeared. I almost braved touching the fence, as if to follow after it. But, a hairline away from the gnarled wire, my hand stopped. My arm retracted. If this was a birdcage, it wasn’t designed to keep things out. It was designed to keep things in.

Exercise 2 –

I didn’t watch horror movies for a good reason. A very good reason. I kept my limbs buckled tight against my body as I took tiny shuffling steps against the hard dirt ground. A cage surrounded the path, which winded between the dense overgrowth of the forest. Was the cage meant to protect the path? It wasn’t much of a path, honestly. More like a sidle-space as narrow as the room between parked cars. Whatever the case, I wasn’t real big on cages, no. And I especially wasn’t real big on this particular cage, how it looked hand-crafted—a long, distorted cage woven from wire strong enough to choke a person. I was afraid to touch it. Afraid it might come alive and wrap a noose around my neck. I was even afraid to breathe too heavily on it. Gosh darn it, I was even afraid to blink. Something shifted above my head and I flinched away with a squeal in my throat. Oh, it was only a leaf. I planted my hand against my chest, heart ramming my ribs, as I braved a peek up at the leaf. The simple, harmless leaf, dangled like a fragile Christmas ornament, old and shriveled and rigid. Long since dead. But when I looked closer, I noticed something nestled in the bones of the leaf.

Remember, these are purely examples and not a set of rules to tell anyone the right way to write – there’s no such thing. Take the examples as only one way to approach the exercises. Then, make your own.

[keyboardsmashwriters]

Crafting a Strong Character Voice || Part 3 Exercise 1 – Take the above photo. Describe it with your own style and your own literary flair. Bring the scene to life. Give it its own characterization. Capture a moment. Exercise 2 – Now, describe the scene from the eyes of one of your characters. Don’t be afraid to borrow those moments of gold you write in exercise 1, but make sure to stay absolutely true and honest to the voice of the character. Bonus – Describe the scene from the eyes of the protagonist. Goal – A big part of what makes a story stand out is character voice. Your own personal style changes as you do, and a character’s voice changes as the character does. When the two come together, there’s potential for literary magic, but bringing out and differentiating between different character voices takes lots of practice and even more reading. Write for yourself, but also take time to write with the intention of improving skills. There’s reading for pleasure, and then there’s reading like a writer. The same applies to writing: write for pleasure, then write to improve. Experiment in these exercises. Try things you haven’t tried before. Remember, the image is meant to generate ideas, so it’s intentionally vague. If you’re not used to writing about the subjects in the image, good. Write something you’ve never written before. Push yourself. Need some help? Check out the guide on character voice, or look at the Voice & Style Summer Camp exercises for additional tips! Share your pieces, however perfect or raw, with other KSWers by posting under the “ksw exercise” tag! Need an Example? Here’s a Poor One –

The sun torched a white hole in the cloudless sky, reflecting off the old ranch home’s cracked beige paint—or, what was left of it. Underneath the deteriorating paint was only the original adobe brick, steadily caving to the will of time. How the wooden boards of the slanted roofs hadn’t caved in yet was beyond me, but the sun had bleached whatever color there might have been to a corpse gray. The dry ground and the parched patches of grass crunched beneath my shoes as I circled around what was left of the abandoned structure. There weren’t many windows, but each one was boarded up, the wood rotting and curling in on itself. Cracks as large as fault lines carved lightning bolts through the brick, thick enough for me to see glimpses of light on the other side. I stepped into what might have been a terrace, or a garden, or an orchard. There was no sign of any of that anymore, just more of the same dry ground. I wondered if children once played here. Maybe even grew up here. I searched for signs in the walls and blocked windows, any sign of the life that once lived here, but I found nothing. My fingertips brushed what was left of the broken wooden doorframe as I stepped into a dark room. An uncomfortably dark room. The air was so still that I felt each molecule of oxygen in the room stir when I took only a single breath. I squinted, taking in the empty room. The light from the doorway and the slits between the boards in the ceiling glittered off the particles in the air but when I braved another step forward, something caught my eye. A shadow against the filth of the concrete. My gaze followed the line of a pipe up through the ceiling, and I realized a stove must have sat here. Had the stove been taken when the people who had lived here left? Or had the stove been taken from them, along with any other sign of life here?

Exercise 2 –

I tilted my head. This place hardly looked like it’d be any source of protection, but with the sun sinking and the fingers of shadow stretching, there wasn’t much of a choice. We either stuffed ourselves in this old farmhouse—less emphasis on “farmhouse”, more emphasis on “old”—or we took refuge under a shrub. I tilted my head more. The beige paint was cracked, revealing the sneeze-colored brick underneath. How the wooden boards of the slanted roofs hadn’t caved in yet was beyond me, and there weren’t many windows, but each one was boarded up, the wood rotting and curling in on itself. Cracks as large as fault lines carved lightning bolts through the brick, thick enough for me to see glimpses of sunset on the other side. The whole of the abandoned building was pretty much the precise color and texture of a long expired corpse. Homey. Yeah. No. Maybe the shrub was more promising. Before calling over the others, it was probably wise to at least check the place out, make sure no serial killers or Santa Claus or Jesus was hiding in one of the five-star bedrooms, right? Right. I didn’t move. It was getting dark. And, well, I wasn’t afraid of the dark, but I was afraid of the dark, and peering across the walled-in terrace to the gaping black hole of a door, it looked damn dark in there. I broke into a sweat.

Remember, these are purely examples (and edited lightly because motivation problems) and not a set of rules to tell anyone the right way to write – there’s no such thing. Take the examples as only one way to approach the exercises. Then, make your own.