This Write Night exercise was inspired by Elegy for the Personal Letter by Allison Joseph. Here’s the exercise for those who could not attend.
Write two letters from one character in your novel to another character in your novel. The second letter should be written by a different character than the first. Remember voice!
The second letter may be a response to the first, but it doesn’t have to be.
The two letters should convey opposite emotions. Choose a pair of emotions from list and write one letter to depict each. (The order doesn’t matter.) If I omitted your favorite pair of emotions, feel free to write about those.
Happy/Sad
Angry/Pacifying
Accusatory/Congratulatory
Triumphant/Defeated
Industrious/Lazy
Hope/Despair
Fear/Bravery
Love/Hate
Grief/Joy
Anticipation/Surprise
Aggression/Submission
Guilt/Innocence
Pride/Shame
Envy/Selflessness
Disgust/Pleasure
Exhausted/Energetic
Regret/Satisfaction
Worry/Relief
Embarrassment/Self-esteem
One letter should tell the truth. The other should be a lie.
Critique Groups
12 hours ago
3 comments:
brilliant.
(as usual)
Here's an amazing thing. That letter exercise solved a problem I was having with the troll story! It never occurred to me to have one character write another. But I'm going to put one of the letters from Write Night right into my draft. I don't know if it will be in the final version, but it's very helpful right now. It was quite the revelation and I believe I made all kinds of "Ooh! Ooh!" noises.
BTW, we're going to scope out libraries to find a quieter place to do Write Night. (It was bad at the book store once again.) I'll have to throttle back the "Oohs!" myself.
I found the exercise helpful too, and a modified form of one of my letters found its way into my draft.
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