This Exercise Might Help You

As you know, I’ve been trying to jumpstart a piece I began in the summer. I found this exercise and it actually helped.

It might work for you, too.

It only takes about ten minutes, but you can adjust the time, up or down.

“Keeping Time” is the name of the exercise. All you have to do is look at the clock and write down the time. Next, you start a dialog using the time you wrote down.

Here’s how I started: It’s 7:00am, T, why is your alarm on?

Before I knew it, Kia (my main character) had made a discovery about her roommate (T) that I wasn’t even aware of.

I was so happy with the results, I tried it again.

This time I created a brief scene (Kia goes to her friend’s dorm room) and put the time dialog in her friend’s mouth.

As I wrote, I learned Kia was being stood up.

Who knows what, if anything, I’ll do with the scenes I wrote.

The good thing is that this exercise relieved me from being stuck.

Yay! I got something on paper.

The exercise described above can be found in
Please let me know if it works for you. If you improve on the idea, please let me know that, too.