Blog Post #7

So to complete all the exercises by the end of the month, I need to do five exercises today and then four on each day after that (because although my blog calendar says the 27th, it is actually the 28th here - so close to NaNoWriMo!)

The next exercise is about studying techniques an author uses that work well and then trying them out yourself. You're supposed to pick the book closest to you, but as I'd just tidied my side of the bed, the closest books were my partners non-fiction business books. Although that could have been a super fun challenge, I went and found a fiction book instead: The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman, possibly one of my favourite books of all time.

I always balk a little at these exercises, and I think it's because I feel like I'm back in school when I do them. However, the hardest exercises are often the most rewarding, and I definitely found that with this one.

The three techniques I looked at were: listing, simile, and the cliff-hanger. Picking the techniques was easy enough, but having to think about why they worked was a lot harder. I realised that these techniques were part of a string of techniques used throughout the chapter, all with the intention of building tension. The listing built tension by giving the reader a suggestion about how the character might be distracted, and then taking it away, frustrating the reader while indicating that the problem was serious enough that none of the character's favourite pastimes would work. The simile built tension and also a gothic mood by comparing the wind to restless spirits. This both relates to previous scenes and foreshadows later ones which also contain apparent supernatural elements. The listing technique was also used here, with each clause building on the previous one and adding to the suspense. Finally, the cliff-hanger summarised these elements (as such), providing a moment of calm before, suddenly (this is a slight flaw in the book, it's overuse of the word suddenly), something dramatic happened.

The next step was applying these techniques when writing a scene in a different genre. I decided to try applying them to a romance. Initially I found it quite difficult, because I still had the previous scene in my mind. I think this would work well if you wrote down the techniques and then did the exercise once you'd forgotten what the techniques were (or swapped with a friend who also did the exercise). Once I got going, however, I was fine.

It was interesting to see how universal techniques can be. I found it easy to use the same techniques in a romance that were used in a mystery novel: it was only the content that differed. After all, restless spirits aren't often something you want in your romance novel (usually).

Learning these techniques well enough that you can write them when needed would really enrich your writing, in my opinion. Learning how to subvert them is even better.

These posts are probably going to get a little shorter as I frantically try to get to the end of NaNoWriMo Bootcamp. Wish me luck!