Fiction Writer's Workshop Read Online Free Page A

jot.
    You should find that this gets easier as the day goes on. If you have a job where you talk all the time, you might want to buy a small pocket recorder and let it run whenever you speak. Either way, there are two keys to this exercise: (1) Record everything in writing. Even if you tape parts of your day, take the time at the end to transcribe it into your spiral. (2) Shape nothing; that is, don't let yourself change the way you normally speak. When you find yourself doing this, stop talking. Just shut up. I think this is the hardest thing to remember when writing fiction.
    Save this recorded day as a document or database. Type it up line by line. We'll use it again and again.
    2. Lug yourself to a public place where you can crowd. If you live close enough, try the airport. But you could go anywhere people travel in bunches. Bus stations. Malls. Restaurants. Forget fiction for a moment. Go where the people are, even if you hate sitting in Denny's for more than the time it takes to drink a cup of joe. Remember my rule. To jot well, you must crowd nicely. Take your spiral. Take your time. Move like a special agent. Try sitting in various spots. At first, jot down everything. Shoot for the first three exchanges you hear between two people. Once you have that, move on. Check your watch, get up and go. No matter how good or bad the exchange was. That way you won't have to worry about getting punched in the nose for eavesdropping. Record ten or fifteen of these exchanges, using one word to describe the context, followed by a colon, then the exchange.
    When finished, look over what you have. Perhaps you see stories galore. Choose one and run with it. Don't wait for me to tell you another thing about writing dialogue. You've been triggered. You can't ask for much more from the world around you. Go and write. Then come back and read chapter two. But perhaps you got nothing. Just a bunch of how-do-you-do's and some exec rambling about the annual reports. Go back. This time be more conscious of whom you choose to crowd and why: The guy with the mohawk, the one carrying the car seat with an infant in it. Or the old couple, clearly arguing about a scarf. What about the two businessmen, nervously tightening up as they approach the ; r rental car? Move in, brush by. Grab what you can. If you've gone this far, you'll be able to grab a few words in an odd context.
    Again, hold on to these. We will use them again.
    3. Script your day. Before you go to bed, write in order everything you are going to say the next day. Picture the day clearly: getting up, the breakfast conversation, parking the car, passing familiar faces in the hall. The next day, stay with the script. Risk disruption. Stop when things don't make any sense to you or the person you're talking to, but stop only at the last minute, only after you've stretched it as far as you possibly can. How much of the dialogue you ran into was predictable? How far did you get before someone said something you didn't expect? What was the element of change? Take note of what you were able to expect and what came out of nowhere. One of the mistakes writers make is to assume that there's a predictability to the everyday. Mundane conversations can be full of particulars of change. Think how much your conversation changes with something as simple as the weather. Or the news. Even the unpredictable moods of those around you. The point here is not to declare that we can't script our lives. You know that. Still, when you start a scene, you'll have a script like this somewhere in place, full of assumptions about where the dialogue should go. The point of this exercise is to make a script that must fight predictability as clearly as your life does every day.
    4. Try a little guerrilla dialogue at home. Think of a question that can't be answered easily. Something like "How much does your liver weigh?" or "How many garbage cans are there in the whole world?" Ask it of everyone you know. Press each of