Warner Onstine

Writing Exercise – Associative Logic

Warner Onstine — Sat, 16 Apr 2016 00:58:15 +0000

Use associative logic in a narration a child tells to an adult. The child can be any age between five and ten. The story itself is a dramatic monologue. Don’t let us hear the adult’s questions or complaints about the anarchic nature of the story— although they can be implied by answers or responses from the child and shifts in the momentum of the story. In this story, the child is trying to tell the adult something important, relating a life-or-death (and very time-sensitive) problem about someone else. The child nevertheless gets lost in the associations— although not to the extent of being unable to tell the story.

Goal – 700 words

Actual – 666 words

What did I like about this exercise?

Fun to write from a different perspective than I normally would. I also got to embrace my tendency to disjointed thought process.

What was challenging about this one?

The disjointed-ness was a little challenging, I sometimes engage in conversation this way, but this was turning the knob to 11 on that :P.

What did I learn?

How to tell a story using only one side of a conversation.

Mommy, mommy, mommy. I need to tell you something. Yes, it’s berry important mommy. So, so, so, Bobby, do you ‘member Bobby? We met a few weeks ago over at the playground. The one you take me to every weekend. The one with the red slide. I like that red slide. And I like the sandy area too. I know mommy! I’m trying to tell you. ‘Member Bobby? We met at the playground with the red slide a few weeks ago? Yeah? OK. Bobby and I were playing that day and he showed me all of his toy soldiers and we had lots of fun. And we became friends. Now we play with his soldiers a lot. One of the soldiers though got eaten or something, his arm is gone and so are his legs. He looks like something cut him up.

I’m trying to tell you. Stooooop. I need to tell you this, OK mommy? So, we played with his toy soldiers a lot and sometimes we play with them down the road. But sometimes we play with them in the front yard. Or over at his house. His mommy is real nice to me too. She brings out milk and cookies sometimes. Or chips, or what do you call them? They’re like chips, but not, more buttery sometimes, or more salty other times. What? Yeah, crackers. Sometimes she’ll give us chips or, uh, crackers, or cookies. His mommy is real nice. His daddy yells at us sometimes and we just go behind the house. Or sometimes down the road.

Stooop, I’m trying to tell you. Sometimes when we play, we play where the water is. You know? Down the road. I know you said to not go in there when it’s raining so we always make sure that it is dry and there are no clouds when we go play. Clouds are fun too. Sometimes we’ll lay on the grass and try and guess what each of the clouds is. Most of mine are dogs. I don’t know why. Is Max around? I haven’t seen him all day. I love Max’s ears, they’re so fluffy. Where is Max? I want to rub his ears.

Yes, that’s blood mommy, but it’s not my blood. See? It wipes off. I’m trying to tell you. It’s like that one time when I hurt my elbow that one time. It wouldn’t stop bleeding until you took me to the ‘mergency room. But this just comes right off. See?

So, Bobby, my friend from the playground and I were playing where the water runs. We were running around and chasing each other playing standup army man. I did so good, I got Bobby bunches of times. He got me a few times until he fell. There was blood everywhere, I didn’t know what to do so I came to get you so you could help take him to the ‘mergency room like you did with me that one time, ‘member, with my elbow? Yeah? You’ll help Bobby? I’ll show you where he is, maybe you can wake him up.

‘Member when we had to find Max that one time? We walked around for houuuurs calling his name. But we won’t have to do that with Bobby because I know right where he is. Why are you running mommy? Don’t you want me to show you where he is? Yeah, he’s by the ‘avine-y thing where the water flows. But why are you running? Bobby will be fine when we get there, we’ll just take him to the ‘mergency room, they’ll give him some stitches and he’ll be as good as ever. Then we can play army men again.

There he is! See, here’s Bobby. Why should I go get his parents? Isn’t he going to be alright? You’re scaring me mommy. What’s wrong with Bobby? Can’t you wake him up? I know I couldn’t but you can right? Why are you pushing on his chest mommy? What’s wrong?

Writing Exercises

Warner Onstine — Sat, 16 Apr 2016 00:40:00 +0000

I’ve been doing writing exercises off and on but never with a clear purpose in mind, just “write more”. I recently read about a book called “3 A.M. Epiphany” which was chock full of exercises so I decided to pick it up. Boy am I glad I did. Not only is it full of different exercises but the author has several suggestions on what to do and how to actually use the exercises to get better.

This page will be used to link all of my exercises together as I post them to my site (for easy reference), but it’s also a glimpse into how to get better as a writer as well as some of the challenges that I faced with each exercise and what I learned.

I will probably repeat exercises so don’t be surprised by that (I’ll try and remember to note it when I do) and I’ll try and remember to provide the exercise number as well so that you can see what I did for a specific one. Most of these will be from 3 A.M. but there might be a few in here that aren’t.

Writing Exercise – The Reluctant I

Warner Onstine — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 00:59:00 +0000

Write a first-person story in which you use the first-person pronoun (I or me or my) only two times— but keep the I somehow important to the narrative you’re constructing. The point of this exercise is to imagine a narrator who is less interested in himself than in what he is observing. You can make your narrator someone who sees an interesting event in which he is not necessarily a participant. Or you can make him self-effacing, yet a major participant in the events related. It is very important in this exercise to make sure your reader is not surprised, forty or fifty words into the piece, to realize that this is a first-person narration. Show us quickly who is observing the scene.

Goal – 600 words

Actual – 556 words

What did I like about this exercise?

I liked figuring out how to tell the story using these constraints. Really forced me to think about how I wanted to say what I was trying to convey.

What was challenging about this one?

It was really a challenge to keep my use of ‘I’, ‘Me’, or ‘My’ in this story. Really made me work for it.

What did I learn?

Using different ways to convey and move the story

The Arizona summer had been absolutely brutal so far. No rain yet, even though it was mid-August, and worse it was humid. Well, humid for Arizona, which meant temperatures of 110 PLUS and humidity of 5 – 10 percent. Walking outside felt like walking into a slightly damp oven, you couldn’t wait to get to car and turn it on, waiting for the A/C to kick on, which normally took a few minutes. And since it was summer that also meant that it didn’t get dark and start to cool down until at least 8 or 8:30. I remembered, not fondly, the summers when I didn’t have air conditioning, at all. Not in the house and not in the car. A giant box-fan was all that there was to help cool the night air.

Walking back from class were several other students trying to get ahead a bit, or catch up, depending on where they were at. The U of A campus was almost deserted during the summer, but the sidewalk preachers were still there, they just had a much smaller crowd to preach to. Walking by, but not too close to be singled out, the words floated “Homosexuality is a sin against God!” and some other choice phrases.

The girls on campus during the summer weren’t the typical co-eds that were there during the Spring and Fall semesters, the ones that were obviously from California. Short shorts, blonde hair, annoying attitude. No, these girls were more demure, more studious, at least that was the perception.

Winding towards the student union a blast of cold air from inside greeted me, a welcome relief from the heat. So, what was going to be the plan tonight? It was Friday, he was pretty much done with his week. Congress always had a good dance night that he could go to, or there was that Goth bar he enjoyed going to. Lots of his friends would be there for sure. Money wouldn’t be too much of an issue, but he would have to watch it a bit. Goth bar it would be.

Quickly navigating the food court, out the back door, and towards the garage, the night lay in front, just a few hours away.

The Goth club was always fun, the music drove into the bones, unless you went further in the back to have a conversation. Plenty of cute girls dressed in black, with plenty of dark makeup to look at, to dance with, flirt with. And the drinks weren’t bad either. Reasonably priced and poured with a slightly heavy hand.

It was interesting to watch the different groups centered around tables that surrounded the dance floor. People from one group would pull away from a table and migrate to another table, almost like little globules in a lava lamp. Some groups would stay mostly intact, others would completely break apart migrating to other tables completely when 1 or 2 people left for the evening. Some would venture out onto the dance floor for several songs, only to come back and find that the rest of their group and split up and have to find a new table.

A girl walked over to the table, very cute, new? “Is anyone here?” Slight head shake, No. She smiled and took out a cigarette. I took out my lighter and smiled back, lighting her cigarette.

Writing Exercise – Sleight Of Hand

Warner Onstine — Sun, 03 Apr 2016 00:48:00 +0000

Write a brief story in which the major event or action is obscured— or easily overlooked— because of a splashier, more visible event. Sleight of hand, or the French phrase leger de main, means crafty or light hand. The magician captures the attention of the audience with one hand while performing the trick with the other hand. You should not necessarily be tricky or deceptive, but in this exercise you want to obscure the important processes you are working on in order to make readers surprised and happy when they uncover the mysteries of the story themselves.

Goal – 400 words

What did I like about this exercise?

So, I liked keeping things a little close to the vest on this one and trying to build some tension with the character, hopefully I succeeded at least a little bit :).

What was challenging about this one?

Figuring out how to weave in some hidden stuff into the story without it being too obvious – I hope.

What did I learn?

That I don’t have to spill the beans, as it were, right away in order to tell a story or a scene.

He could hear the tap-tap-tap on the window pane, that damn bird was back again, pesky sparrow. This was the third time this morning this stupid bird had come tapping at his window. He had repeatedly shooed it away, again and again and now here it was. Again. John walked over to the window where the bird stood and looked at it, the bird calmly looked back at him, through the window and then tapped three more times.

“Ahhhhhhh!” John screamed at the bird, flapping his arms wildly, causing the bird to flutter off to the nearby skeletal tree. The bird lit on a branch and turned around to look at him, at least that’s what it felt like to John. John let out a huge sigh and tried to remember what the hell it was he was about to do, or in the middle of doing, he couldn’t quite remember anymore.

Oh, right, he was going to make himself a sandwich for lunch. Right. John made his way into the kitchen and opened up the fridge and peered inside. Let’s see, ham, turkey, chicken salad? Hmmm. John finally decided on a turkey sandwich with tomato, avocado and bacon and began to reach for the turkey when… Tap.Tap.Tap.

He jerked his head up, slammed the refrigerator door, and ran over to the window, but by the time he got there the sparrow had left, already flown back to his limb. John sighed again and quickly went back to the fridge and began to collect his ingredients. Just as he got everything out on the counter the phone rang. It took a second to register that it was the phone this time and not the sparrow so it rang at least three times before he was able to answer it.

John picked up the phone and turned towards the window again, the sparrow was sitting there, staring at him.

“Hello?” “I’m officer Jay Thompson sir. Is this Mr. Anderson?” a brusk, commanding voice asked on the other end of the line. “Uh, yes, this is Mr. Anderson.” “Is your wife…” John actually didn’t hear the rest of the question as all of the blood rushed out from his limbs and he seemed to lose all hearing briefly. “I’m, I’m sorry. Could you repeat that again?” His lips felt numb saying those words. “Is your wife Barbara Anderson?” “Yes. Yes it is. What has happened? Is she hurt?” He knew the answer, or at least feared the answer that he thought he knew. “I’m sorry sir. Your wife was killed in a car accident.”

John struggled to get the information from the officer. His brain was all over the place, he couldn’t remember where they kept the notepad, or the pens, or a pencil, but finally he was able to write down the location of the medical examiners office where they wanted him to go to identify his wife’s body. Barbara’s body.

John asked a friend of his, Dave, to drive him to the examiner’s office and then to drive him back. He didn’t say more than three words the whole time in the car. Finally back at home he walked into the living room and collapsed in chair. He fell asleep like that and woke about three hours later, still feeling exhausted. Slowly he got up and rubbed his eyes.

It dawned on him that he hadn’t heard that damn sparrow since the phone rang. He looked over at the window and it was still sitting there. No way to know if it had been sitting there the whole time, but John had a feeling it had been. John felt an anger well up in him that he hadn’t felt in a long time. “Why aren’t you fucking tapping now! Huh? Why not now?” The sparrow just cocked its head, looking at him and then took off, not going back to its branch like it had before. Just gone.

John started to weep.