Writer’s Calisthenics

These are some tools to help exercise the writer’s brain and to help hone craft.  You can do any or all of these in no particular order.

1.  ACTIVELY READ (I know super obvious) - Read as much of the type of writing you want to do (Novels, Short Stories, Plays, Screenplays, etc).  If you want to do it all, read everything.  The trick here is to Actively read, don’t just let the suspension of disbelief take over.  Think about what each sentence, section of dialog paragraph, and slug line is good for in the grand whole.  Where is the story going and how does it take you there.

2.  FOLLOW ALONG  - Watch a movie with the screenplay in your lap.  Pause when you need to. The point is to see how a scene is describe on the page and how it actually turned out.  

3.  OUTLINE - Watch a film over and over to create a 70 beat outline from the finished product.  You can find out more about 70 beats here. This is a great exercise to learn how to structure a story. 

4.  SETUP & PAYOFF - While watching a movie make a list of all the setups and payoffs in the story.  They just introduced a teddy bear and you know it’s going to be important - That’s a set up.  What actually happens with the teddy bear is the payoff.  These can be big and small but always push action forward.  One of the best movies for this exercise is The Apartment with Jack Lemon and Shirley McClain.  Setup’s and Payoffs in screenplays are an elegant way to tie the scenes together into a cohesive whole.   This will show you how they work.  

5.  USE A TYPE WRITER for free form journaling.  I have a theory that word processors make people lazy.  (I’ll spell / grammar check it later.)  Learning to writing with a typewriter is like learning to ride a bike without training wheels.  It is physically harder to press the keys, make a mistake and you have to retype a whole page, formatting isn’t automatic, and if your unsure about how to spell a world or how to write a certain sentence stop and look up the rule.  I’m not saying do everything on a typewriter - but use it like a treadmill or weight machine.  

6.  GO BACK TO GRAMMAR SCHOOL - I’m not a grammar nazi, in fact I’m sure some of you are rolling your eyes at this blog’s egregious grammatical mistakes.  The point here is - grammar for writers is like paint to a painter.  You can’t teach creativity, but you can teach grammar.  It is a tool of the craft that must be mastered if you want to be taken seriously as a writer.  A great story and perfect spelling and grammar are not mutually exclusive.  There are some great books - Strunk and White, Woe is I, Eat Shoots and Leaves, etc.

 
7.  TRANSCRIBE - There was a director (I think it was William Wyler, not sure)  who would re-type the screenplay before going into production.  By doing this he would discover things in the screenplay that he would have otherwise grazed over.  Find a screenplay or a chapter in a favorite book and re-type it.  This one is kind of like putting your fingers in an idol’s brain.  It’s also a great ego buster.  Everyone can get used to writing stuff this good.