Summertime Writing: Freestyle Nouns & Word Qualities

With three flash fiction stories finished, I can get back to summertime writing.

In the first four summertime writing posts, the source for the exercises was the Spellbinding Sentences put out by Writer's Digest by Barbara Baig. I tried to personalize the exercises so that they are original content for this blog.

In this exercise, I want to combine two sources for the exercise. The first also comes from S.S. chapter 6 on the Qualities of Words. In the chapter it mentions words that are formal vs informal, general vs specific, and abstract vs concrete. A fun exercise to do is to mix this with an exercise that I read in another book, 90 Days to Your Novel by Sarah Domet. In day 1 exercise Ready, Set, Go (With What You Know), the author challenges the writer to brainstorm from early memories people, places, and things. Instead of 2 hours, I will do a short version.

Brainstorm Nouns

People: Old grandfather was very crafty, school bully that class stood up against, inventive friend that doesn't trust anyone, deliverer, acquaintance that likes physical activities, art teacher that is very old and yet stylish, a two-faced person, brother.

Places: fragmented hometown, desert oasis, vine infested jungle, in the middle of a hurricane, standing on a pier smelling the scent of seawater and hearing the sound of waves hit the support, on a bicycle, canoeing down a river, on an exercise bicycle.

Things: watch, pencil, computer, paper, led light, dice, hometown football shirt, fast racecar, canoe, yellow one-person tent, old pad of paper that is almost used up, the sound of fall maple leaves blowing in a strong wind outside the room window, van.

Analysis of Nouns

The first thing that I realized while typing these up was that for people and places were easier to make specific, for me, than things. Towards the end of making the list of things, I consciously shifted into trying to make more specific things. I also notice that my mind was blank at first and then I just started to list things in my vacinity. The "sound of fall maple leaves..." was a memory, however.

In this brainstorm, I did not list any proper nouns even though several of the nouns do have proper noun names.

The hometown football shirt could be a jersey, but when I wrote it I was wearing a t-shirt with the teams name on it.

Many of the longer written words and phrases do have a more emotional connection with me compared to the single or general words.

I do need a few abstract nouns. I'll do that now. time, challenge, understanding, effort, growth.

Next posts

This post will probably serve as a foundation for several posts because both books have further exercises reusing these initial collections of words.