Good morning everyone. Once again it is Tuesday and therefore time to get emotional. These are the show don’t tell exercises so remember, we are taking the emotion and thinking about how it shows in our characters. We can use facial expressions, tone and inflection, body movements, anything really except for naming the emotion. Hence the show don’t tell. Some of you may have a character in mind from something you are working on, but others may make them up solely for the purpose of this exercise. Either works as this is just for you to practice your skills.
Today’s Emotion: Determined
Maybe your character wants something. Maybe they want to accomplish something. Conversely they could also want to prevent someone from doing or achieving something. Either way, they are determined. Take a minute to set up the scene in your head and then show that determination without using the term determined (or any of it’s derivatives).
Some of you may want to just write, others may find it helpful to set a timer. I find that with the timer going I am less inclined to stop and edit myself so when I do exercises like this I tend to get my idea in my head, write it with the timer and then go back and adjust so that I am really showing the emotion in the scene. There are always things that occur to me just after the timer goes off.
Since this isn’t really a timed exercise, I tend to go back and add them. I find having them stashed way as general exercises also helps me later when I need to write that emotion into an actual story. I can flip back through and see what I came up with when I was solely focused on the emotion and let it inspire my non exercise writing later.
But as always how you use these exercises is up to you. Happy Writing!
Ten til Midnight 