The Seven Day Writing Challenge - Day 4

This seven-day writing challenge is designed to simply get you writing. There is no word limit on each exercise but you’ll probably aim to write 300 – 500 words for each. Make the exercises work for you as you wish. You can work chronologically through each day, or you can spend more time on one day if it needs more attention and then catch up with the other exercises at a later date. Most importantly, just keep writing! Save revisions for after the end of the challenge. I’d love to know how you get on so leave a comment!

Giving Directions

On an earlier post about dialogue (read it here) I said that speech ‘is the way in which a character’s inner world escapes fleetingly for other people to see. Dialogue is different from thought because it is controlled and censored. Therefore, when you write speech you need to apply this same filter process. Having said that speech can’t be too rigid. In short, you need to achieve something more controlled than thought, yet something natural and realistic.’

Try your hand at dialogue with this exercise: depict a scene in which one character asks another for directions to somewhere. This is a good scenario to practice with because we generally know how the conversation will go, so you can modify depending on character and story. Furthermore, it is a catalyst for drama in that it is a situation in which one character needs something from the other, giving you some scope for action. To start with, just write the dialogue and add prose later. 

Come back tomorrow for another exercise. Happy Writing! 

Previous exercises: Day One – You are Here 

                                Day Two – Fashioning your Character 

                                Day Three – Transformations