#namingtheworld

[typingoverworld]

“Naming the World” edited by Bret Anthony Johnston

“Being a writer is, in the fullest sense of the word, a vocation. It’s labor, to be sure, often very lonely and stilted and compromising labor, but it’s also more than that; it’s a calling, an act of courage, an act of faith.” p. xv

[incrambles]

Exercise: (Start With a Line)

The one thing you’ll notice when it begins to rain is that people huddle. They feel the community that they usually shrug away. A man, soaked completely from the storm, seeks refuge in a cafe. He sloshes into the warmness and, in unison, all the caffeinated poets raise their heads, distracted from their local newspaper and their steamed cream. This look is us human’s way of saying, “We understand the hardships of being umbrellaless. Come, share some of our warmth. We have room.” These huddles last until the blue sky, when everyone scatters their own way like a jar of marbles dropped to the kitchen floor. And it was during this particular huddle, and this particular downpour that I first met Annie.

[typingoverworld]

...any writing, no matter how primitive or half-formed is better than panic and paralysis.

C. Michael Curtis, “Bullies I Have Known”, p. 57 of “Naming the World, edited by Bret Anthony Johnston

[typingoverworld]

Do not allow the reader to dismiss your character as a type. Prove to the reader--by choosing unique but concrete details--that your character is worthy of their sympathy, worthy of their investment in all that is at stake for your character.

Julia Fierro, “Get Closer: Exposing Your Characters (With Compassion)” p. 107 from “Naming the World” edited by Bret Anthony Johnston

[typingoverworld]

“Naming the World” edited by Bret Anthony Johnston

“Stories are how we make sense of our lives, how we attempt to impose some discernible order on the chaos of existence, and such attempts make the chaos bearable.” p. xviii

[typingoverworld]

...[writing prompts] aim to stoke your imagination, to heighten your attention to language, and to focus your concentration before the day's real writing begins. Think of them as literary jumping jacks or a shot of tequila, a regimen to get the blood pumping and the muscles limber so that your work is as strong as possible.

“Naming the World” edited by Bret Anthony Johnston, p. xix

[typingoverworld]

Start with a Line #5

“Most things will never happen; this one will.” - John Dufresne, “Germs” in “Naming the World”

Note: “Start with a Line” is an exercise where you are asked to start a story with a given word, phrase, or paragraph.

[typingoverworld]

“Naming the World (and other exercises for the creative writer)” edited by Bret Anthony Johnston

From page 53, “How to Name the World: An Exercise in Research” by Bret Anthony Johnston:

“...research...buttressing the imagination with an unequivocal foundation in the material world.”

“Writers often use research to find the perfect details, pieces of information that simultaneously ground a story and give it wings. Spot-on details elicit readers’ trust while drawing them deeper and more completely into the narrative. Then, once the readers are immersed in the imaginary world, the research will keep them there, to sustain an atmosphere more real than reality.”

Exercise: “Return to an unfinished project and ferret out places or ways to incorporate research.”

[typingoverworld]

Naming the World and other exercises for the creative writer edited by Bret Anthony Johnston

“Writing exercises, I believe, serve to introduce or elucidate techniques and strategies that authors can use to bridge that void.” p. xviii

The void is in reference to the ease of verbally telling a story versus the struggling of writing that same story down, or, as the editor states: “...the distance between the perfect idea in your mind and the foundering jumble of words on the page.” p. xviii

- Use an audio recording device, such as your phone, to verbally tell a story. For the purposes of this writing prompt, start recording your story with the intention of taking at least 5-10 minutes to tell it. Then, without listening to the recorded audio, write the same story down. Was it harder or easier to write it down? Next, listen to your audio recording and see what essential pieces of the story were missed or mixed up.

[typingoverworld]

Readers care what you see and they respond to how your observation of the world makes them feel. And you can't make anybody feel anything if you aren't rendering real emotion on the page.

Michael Knight, “Through Your Characters Eyes” from p. 112 of “Naming the World”

[typingoverworld]

We can't identify, not completely, with perfect characters, so as readers we resist and retreat from protagonists with impeccable clothes, flawless skin, overflowing bank accounts, prodigious children. Regardless of genre, and whether you're writing fiction or non-fiction, the goal of the writer is to create likable, fully developed characters.

Bret Anthony Johnston, p. 68 of “Naming the World”

[incrambles]

Exercise: (Start With a Place)

Beginning

She began the night under the church light. The harsh light illuminated her like she was a holy statue, wooden and chipped from age. The church steps felt cold against her thighs as she tilted the bottle to sip. It was almost as if the church had called her name that night. As she walked from the gas station with a heavy forty ounces tucked under her arm, the church light caught her eye in the dark. So she went and she sat and she drank. The field next to the church whispered a cricket’s lullaby to her as she sank into this space. She hadn’t been here before, but the air hugged her as if it had been waiting for her all along and its breeze was a sigh of relief to remember her presence. In the center of this sphere of illumination, her dark green jacket roughly contrasted the white of the heavy doors behind her. Each ounce of malt liquor made her feel more like the statue she resembled and less like a girl who sifts through the dark looking for a place to be alone. She wondered, can holy statues hear prayers?And if they can, do they also hear thoughts, the kind that become prayers without our approval while we’re looking the other way? Right now she didn’t seem to have any prayers planted or prepared. In two hours, she would meet him at the gated road. If she were to hand over a prayer to the wooden dolls, she decided that all she would ask is for this last follow-through. He would be waiting for her. Maybe he would hug her tighter than the breeze that encircled her holy perch, and his arms would say all those words that were always beautiful but out of order. Maybe he would ask her with disapproval why she walked, why she stumbled on her feet and her sentences. Maybe he would share her sips and walk her back to the comfort of the church steps, where she had fallen in love with the crickets two hours before. They could decide together how to draw a thick line between thoughts and prayers, and stack them neatly in two piles to compare against each other. Passing the halfway mark on the glass bottle, she swallowed the malt liquor and admired the church light shining through the caramel liquid. She played possible scenarios on repeat in her head, a child swinging on the playground with no way to slow down and too afraid to jump. Maybe the gated road would be empty, and she would walk back to the church alone, with an empty prayer stuffed roughly into her empty glass bottle.