Creative Narrative - A Description EXERCISE

Creative Narrative
A Description Exercise.

DESCRIPTION is the key to fleshing out ANY scene if you want the Reader to see in their minds the scene you envisioned when you wrote it.

Especially Sex Scenes.

Don't just call it 'juice'...

Describe HOW the moisture Looks while sliding in slender rivulets down the inside of her thigh, THEN describe how it feels physically, THEN how the character feels emotionally about the fact that they're dripping from excitement.

1. What it Looks & Feels like physically.
2. How they Feel about it emotionally.

You have FIVE senses -- USE THEM:
Texture, Flavor, Appearance, Sound, Aroma

The glistening moisture slid in slender rivulets down the inside of her thigh. The coolness of the moisture tickled in contrast to the warmth of her skin. Because her skirt was so short, her excitement was clearly visible to anyone who happened to be looking. Her cheeks filled with embarrassed warmth and she lowered her gaze, not wanting to know who might be staring at her, aware that she was aroused. 

"So how do you DO that sort of writing?"

The same way you do anything; you PRACTICE. 


Exercise in Writing DESCRIPTION

Stage 1:

Watch a Movie

 

 For this exercise, you will need the movie Sin City. If you don't have it, The Matrix or Equilibrium will do.

• WATCH the movie undisturbed from beginning to end.
• NO INTERRUPTIONS.

Watch where the Camera looks. ​

Sin City in particular is a brilliant example of how to describe using pictures. The movie is filmed in black and white with splashes of color only where the viewer's eye needs to be.

When a character is first introduced, LOOK at how the camera starts in Close Focus then pulls back to reveal the character's body; lovingly showing the viewer exactly what the character looks like, AND their distinguishing characteristics from top to bottom.

THEN the view expands wider, or pans around the character to disclose where that character is and what they are doing at that moment.

After those first few moments of sheer View, you get a narrative from the Point of View character, which may Not be the character the camera is showing you. You get the narrator's opinions, their feelings, and their delusions. THAT is how the viewer (the reader) learns about the character.

Once the movie is over, put on some music that fits the movie. (I actually have the soundtracks, to these.)

Next! Break out your remote control and Watch The Same Movie AGAIN -- but this time, with the volume OFF.

Sit on your couch and Out-Loud, Narrate what you are looking at. Do NOT Write anything.

Just talk to the TV screen Out Loud and Describe --in detail-- what you are looking at as though it was a book you were reading.

• Describe the Characters.
• Describe the Actions.
• Describe the Fight Scenes.
• Describe the Kisses.
• Describe the Backgrounds and Setting -- including the rooms and weather conditions!

Use your remote control and STOP the scene where you have difficulty describing what you are seeing. Work at it until the words come to you. They don't have to be perfect. CLOSE IS good enough for this exercise.

In a Nutshell:

• Describe Out-Loud what you SEE
• Do NOT Write anything down.
• Keep Going until the movie is Over.

This should help loosen up a few things in your writing mind -- and give you some strong visuals to write from later.

Next!

Stage 2:

Write a 1000 word Scene that introduces a character of YOURS.

 

Make sure you picture the scene in your mind with the same dramatic camera angles and close-ups the movie and Describe it so that anyone Reading it can clearly see it.

Compare that scene with any introductory scene in a story you've already written and SEE the difference.

Just so you know, this is an exercise I created to make my own writing more Visual back when I first started writing. The movie I used was "The Lost Boys", the original 1984 version. It really helped my ability to describe in my stories.

Enjoy!

Morgan Hawke

Memory Training

How I trained myself to have a
Photographic Memory.

Shortly after I published my very first story, I was introduced to the phrase: "Write What You Know."

I was horrified.

I was horrified because I was still in high school and living with my Mother in a very small New England town. Other than a few encounters with a couple of ghosts, and what I had looked up in my local library, (keep in mind this was 1980, the internet hadn't been invented yet,) I knew Nothing. Seriously, I had no personal experience doing Anything.

What the heck was I supposed to write if I only wrote what I knew?

I had yet to learn how to drive a car, but that was okay. I was damned good at riding the bus. However, I still hadn't had my first kiss yet so relationship stories of Any kind were right out. Forget stories that had guns or weapons, though I could use a sling-shot and swung a mean baseball bat. (Don't make me break out my pocketbook!) Forget stories with horses in it, though I did know how to feed and train a dog.

I had three younger brothers so I had some experience with childcare, but having learned my techniques from a sociopathic parent (Not a Joke,) writing from those experiences would have landed that character in the villain slot, pronto. (The scary part was that I was aware of this back then!) I sucked at sports and had no friends, so those kinds of stories were out too.

In short, the sum total of my knowledge was strictly from books. Which was to say, Not Useful toward making a story realistic in even the vaguest sense.

Even worse, I discovered that my memory Leaked. I could remember things long enough to pass a test, but that was as far as it got.

Since moving out of my mom's house wasn't looking too close to happening, experiencing new things had to be put on hold. Instead I started working on my memory.

I tried a number of techniques but what worked for me was a type of Image Association.

In short, staring hard at something and then later, Drawing it. Or rather, trying to. I was an okay artist, nothing terrific, believe me, but I noticed right away that if I drew a picture whatever I was trying to remember stayed in my head better. Even doodling in the bottom corner of my notebook worked. The really interesting thing was that the picture didn't have to be related at all to what I was trying to remember! Though it worked better if it was.

Strangely enough, cutting pictures out of magazines worked too, though not nearly as well. I had to really stare at the picture and recite out loud what it was I was trying to remember.

This led to the next step: Recitation.

This meant quite literally, staring hard at a scene I wanted to write about later, such as the park during the height of autumn, or a thunderstorm, and describing it out loud -- without writing it down. Just spitting out adjectives that described what I was looking at, or what I was Feeling, such as what the brass handrail in school felt like sliding under my hand while walking down the stairs. After only a couple of tries, it didn't even have to be out loud. Saying it in my head or under my breath worked too.

I never did recall exactly what I said, but I recalled the experience Perfectly. In other words, Sensory Association.

By the way, the Schoolhouse Rock multiplication jingles saved my math grade, seriously. If I sang along with the cartoon, I remembered it. ALL of it. In fact, I still remember them. Recitation + Images.

About a month or two after I started doing all that, the flip-side of those exercises suddenly kicked in. I started Picturing what I was reading while I read it. In other words, I was playing a movie in my head of whatever I was reading. Though it was a bit more than that. My memory added the experiences I'd worked to remember. If the writer mentioned 'forest', my memory automatically added the sound of the wind, bird-calls, the smell of moldering earth, the specific colors of the leaves in sunlight, and the chilly brush of a breeze.

That doesn't seem like such a big deal, but it had one hell of a side effect.

I could remember anything I'd read. That included Text Books. If the text books had pictures it was even easier. I was actually able to remember the names and stories of any historical figure simply by picturing that person's portrait.

However, I was not remembering the Words, only the images I'd seen and the Stories that went with it. This actually worked well when I needed to answer essay questions.

However, my ability to remember things in a list; dates, names, phone numbers, groceries I needed to buy...dropped off the face of the earth. If I didn't have a picture to connect with what I was trying to remember, it left my head almost the moment it went in.

My last two years of high school saw a major lift in my grades in every subject except One: Math. I still suck at math. Numbers simply don't bring up images. I could remember my times tables, (thank you Schoolhouse Rock,) but that was IT. Geometry was fine because the formulas were all associated with shapes, but Algebra was right out.

One would think that Grammar would have been difficult to remember, but it wasn't. I was using it almost daily in my story notebooks. (When one is writing a story, one NEEDS punctuation to have it make sense to the reader.) Repetition saved me there.

Later on, I finally left home and gathered a great number of wildly varying experiences. I still can't recall all the names of the people I met, but their faces are all engraved on my mind along with everything I experienced down to the weather conditions on the day it happened.

Picture Association and Sensory Association


Those were the keys to how I trained my memory to recall anything I'd seen or done clearly enough to write it on paper. I'm still amazed by how much I haven't forgotten.

Enjoy!

The Pecular Popularity of sparkly vampires, Pokemon, and other fairy-tale Lovers.

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Birthday Present from Dakota Cassidy!

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Muse

Prayer to the Muse

Calliope, oh, mistress of the pen,
Fair whisperer of the writer’s mien.
You give to us dreams, both dark and bright,
And the kiss of inspiration’s might.

You brush us with swift lightning’s force,
As we write epics of passion's course.
To you we keep our sacred duty,
To write of life’s dark shadowed beauty

All we ask, oh literary muse,
Is time to complete our written dues.
Keep us from the heart diminished,
And leave us not with work unfinished.

May we hold firmly the pen sublime,
That we might finish before deadline.
And keep your kiss upon our brow,
That we may write unto the final bow.

Morgan Hawke
(Believe it or not, this puppy is Original -- by Me!)

Haunted ~ The Writer's Vision

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Keeping Count ~ Tricks for Controlling Word Count

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Personal Fulfillment ~ As a Writer

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Smut-Writer - and Damned Proud of it!

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The Nature of EVIL

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About Morgan Hawke

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