Exercises

Post a passage of narrative as a series of questions.

Post it as a set of imperatives (orders).

Describe one of your major characters making the transition from a dreaming sleep to awakening.

Put four of your characters (possibly from different stories) together in a room. Have them plot to kill a fifth -- a character they've had enough of.

Have a character from one story rifle the wardrobe of another, looking for evidence or information or an intimate possesison.

Have two characters who know each other well tell a joint story in a combined voice. Don't have them speak in dialogue; have them narrate it together.

Take a passage of narrative that's full of sensory images. For each image, describe the image with a different sense so that a sight becomes a smell or a sound or a taste or a feeling and so on.

Take a passage and apply synaesthesia. Mix the senses so that what the eyes see, the tongue can taste etc...

Pick a tense passage where a protagonist and antagonist are vying. Give each character a different colour, and replace the images in that passage with images appropriate to the colour of the character -- but don't directly mention the colour itself.

(Most of these ideas are taken from Brian Kitely's 3AM Epiphany. I've tried to choose those that might lend themselves well to interstitiality.)

AMCrenshaw said:

In a first draft of a new story, name your characters according to their surface personalities; then give them another name that describes more their inner selves.

AMC

Click to expand...

Or make it more interstitial.... Name your characters according to a fruit that reveals their personalities, then name them after a sea creature that reveals their inner selves .