Exercise: Show Don't Tell
One of the qualities of a good writer is their ability to show you the abstract things (mood, attitude, emotions, etc.) through the concrete. Readers want to be able to feel what the character is feeling and the way that the character is experiencing the world around them - telling them that a character is angry is less effective than showing them an angry character looking at the world through their eyes.
1. For this exercise, you are going to write a short and scene about a very simple action (take 10-15min). Try to keep it as objective and matter of fact as possible. What does the character see? What to do they hear? What's the weather like? Describe the scene.
2. After you have finished writing, go to
http://feelingswheel.com/
Pick a color (you can start with the basic feeling and then get more specific if you want to challenge yourself). Keep it a secret if you are in a group. Also, try picking something out of your comfort zone to really work out your brain
3. Now that you have a simple or complex emotion, go back to the scene that you wrote and rewrite to convey what that character is feeling without using any "emotion" words.
4. Pass your work to someone and see if they can guess what emotion you were trying to show. If they can guess it, kudos! If not, discuss it and find out why.
Prompt: Write a short scene about a person looking for their car in a parking lot.
This Weeks Writes
Marielle
Byran
Mike
Vienna
Heathcliff stumbled into the bar. The saturated lights were enough to blind him, having him curse under his breath at the sight of numerous women crowding the entrance of his periphery. One of them, a woman he tried to recall from the letter as one who went by the name of Chrissy, strode over to him and took his hat, placing it onto the rack near the door. Heathcliff watched her move, at how she beckoned him over like she ran the place. Eventually, he reconciled with linking his arm with hers, keeping a note on his footing as they navigated through the suffocating bustle.
Sweat beaded his forehead. The loud noises were enough to bring back a dim ringing in the back of his head. Until the woman beside him pressed her fingers to his bicep.
Chrissy smiled at him, eyes half-lidded in the dim lighting. She was a recognized island in the sea of lip-glossed faces. “Will you be needing a drink?”
Heathcliff bit his lip at that. Did he? How long has it been since he did? Taking a seat at one of the rows, he motioned toward the menu above their heads, voice rough and heavy from the lack of use. “Nothing alcoholic, please. I need to heal.”
Chrissy nodded. Beckoning the waiter over, she leaned against him, resting her head against his warmth with a breathy little sigh. The bartender, with his shadowed features and shifty eyes, listened to her request with a clean nod of his head. When the man shot a glance at him, Heathcliff looked down at the bar wood, pressing his fingertips against the niches as he listened to the retreating thuds of the man’s boots. After a few seconds, two glasses were plopped onto the counter wood, water already condensed at the bases.
Bryan: [Tired] I hold my magazine over my head to shield my face and eyes from the sun. It was so cold in the store that exiting the store made the heat feel like a warm blanket covering my whole body. My hand starts to feel weak and my eyes droop as the heat blanket makes me wish for a pillow. I can feel the sun burning my hand that’s holding the magazine. Suddenly the heat starts to feel less like a blanket and more like I’m in a sauna fully clothed. I need to find my car but the glares and bright reflections of the sun’s bright rays against the windows and bright metal of the cars in the parking lot made it difficult to see. I reached into my bag to grab my sunglasses as my eyes started to ache. I move towards the direction I think my car is in. My car is old and doesn’t have a beeper. Opening it requires a key, rolling down the windows requires a handle, and if I want to listen to a song I like I have to buy it on CD, tape, or hope they’re playing it on the radio. Everything about it requires me to do more work than what I have energy for. I’m breathing through my mouth and almost panting like a dog. I hear chirping. It’s the birds eating food scraps by the shopping cart returns and they flew away as I drew close. How can they fly in such weather? If I were a bird I’d sit in my nest all day feeling the breeze through the leaves of the tree. I need water. I see a tree with plenty of leaves and I sit down on the concrete edging around it. The heavy foliage of the tree shades me from the sun and I use the magazine to fan myself.
Mike: [Frustration]
The world we live in is a world of secrets, how this blue ball turns is determined by the exchange of those secrets. How and where these exchanges happen may seem everchanging, a lone newspaper in a park, a random magazine from a bodega, or in my case the cliche of all meeting places. A dark and mostly vacant parking garage. Cold and lifeless, protected by a maze of cars with only one small problem. The same problem with every exchange. Human error. Human error, deaths most common playing card weather it’s false judgment or just plain stupidity, in my case it's just stupidity. You may be asking yourself what stupid thing did I do, was it forgeting to load my gun. Nope still got a full mag, mins 2 bullets. How about forgetting to check if you were being tailed. Ain't that either, that sorry sob is currently holding my two missing bullets. No, what's going to get me killed is possibly the dumbest way to die in my line of work. Forgetting where you parked the dam, get away vehicle. I mean, what a rookie mistake especially when the guy you killed also had a guy tailing him, you know just in case the first guy got killed. If that's not bad enough, leave it to my source to choose a meeting mall parking lot on a Saturday night.
Vienna: [Dissapointment]
Stepped outside with my eyes looking at the floor which is how I noticed it had started raining. When I went inside it did seem pretty cloudy, yes, but I just expected it to just stay gloomy. That it would just be a cool overcast day compared to the regular heat we would get. But as the day shifted, so did the weather and it's now pouring. Because I wasn’t prepared, I have nothing to protect myself from the heavy droplets and use my bag to hold it over my head. Then I start running to my car. It was more of a jog since I’m wearing heels. Whatever I can do to try and hurry home and leave this place. However, I spend longer than I should here as I seem to have forgotten where I parked my car. I groan and stomp one of my feet on the ground and throw my head back as I have to bring my bag down and let myself become drenched at this point to reach into it and get my keys to sound the car’s alarm. At least it blares not too far away from me. I hurry towards it then fumble with my keys to get the one for the car door. When I unlock the door and sit inside, I immediately turn the heater all the way up as though to try and compensate for my wet, cold clothes. Like it was going to make a difference; like it’ll erase the events of the day.