The 3 A.M. Epiphany: Uncommon Writing Exercises that Transform Your Fiction
Brian Kiteley
Language: English
Pages: 272
ISBN: 1582973512
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Discover Just How Good Your Writing Can Be
If you write, you know what it's like. Insight and creativity - the desire to push the boundaries of your writing - strike when you least expect it. And you're often in no position to act: in the shower, driving the kids to school...in the middle of the night.
The 3 A.M. Epiphany offers more than 200 intriguing writing exercises designed to help you think, write, and revise like never before - without having to wait for creative inspiration. Brian Kiteley, noted author and director of the University of Denver's creative writing program, has crafted and refined these exercises through 15 years of teaching experience.
You'll learn how to:
- Transform staid and stale writing patterns into exciting experiments in fiction
- Shed the anxieties that keep you from reaching your full potential as a writer
- Craft unique ideas by combining personal experience with unrestricted imagination
- Examine and overcome all of your fiction writing concerns, from getting started to writer's block
Open the book, select an exercise, and give it a try. It's just what you need to craft refreshing new fiction, discover bold new insights, and explore what it means to be a writer.
It's never too early to start--not even 3 A.M.
material. SYNESTHESIA. Use synesthesia (see some definitions below) in a short scene—surreptitiously, without drawing too much attention to it—to convey to your reader an important understanding of some ineffable sensory experience. Use sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. 600 words According to M.H. Abrams in A Glossary of Literary Terms, synesthesia is a description of “one kind of sensation in terms of another; color is attributed to sounds, odor to colors, sound to odors, and so on.”
significant departures from historical fact. History is a sort of fiction, a narrative imposed on chaotic and competing events to make it coherent. Making another type of fiction of history, by slightly shifting a historic event, allows you to fiddle with the smaller details of history rather than the large ones. 700 words WHAT IF FICTION (it’s a genre a bit like science fiction) supposes that the North had been defeated—or at least fought to a standstill—in the Civil War, for example. What
walk, never mind where are we going? Friends in Lebanon were always amused at my striding off determinedly with long paces, eyes forward, heels clipping hard onto the path, self-conscious purpose in every move, going somewhere, even if only—ultimate laughter—“for a walk.” Notice how your friends walk—each has a signature walk. One person will walk with shoulders slouched a little forward, head peering at the ground. Another walks on the balls of her feet, with a bounce and an occasional skip. A
to say whatever you want to someone. The title of this exercise derives from the Greek word barbarus, which means foreign or ignorant, or simply not Greek. All foreigners are barbaric to natives of a region. I hope this exercise makes you play with the idea of foreignness. Think of all the different types of gestures that could be misread— shaking hands being an act of aggression, an index finger held on one side of the nose that means, “Your mother is a prostitute.” LIFE AS TEXT. Take one
what you thought you were doing at many different points in the process. End in the middle. End each day’s project in the middle of something exciting. It will make it easier to pick up the book next time. I noticed an intriguing effect when I lived in Seattle. I wrote each morning before going to a job. I left the house at exactly the same time each day, and I’d arranged it so I could leave the house with no other task—brushing my teeth, bagging my lunch, showering. I was operating on this