Writing Exercises

Part of my critique group meets one evening a month for writing exercises. Often the scenes I create, never make it into a WIP. The few passages that do appear in a manuscript are changed significantly.

Why do we do it?

The goal of a useful exercise is to help the writer discover something about his or her WIP. Last night, I brought the exercise, and a glaring problem with my WIP smacked me in the face. The central conflict between the brothers in my novel is nebulous. I need to clarify it.

My exercise was more difficult than I'd intended, and we didn't finish all of the steps. Everybody wrote one scene, and most of us complained about having to think too hard.

I'll paste the exercise into another post.

Postscript: Last night I worked on my current WIP (TAoCBS), but my previous WIP (CBL) could also benefit from this exercise. And since I need to revise CBL before I send it out again, this exercise might be a good place to start.