Reprinted from Workbench: The Bulletin of the National Writers' Workshop, Vol. 4
Here are some exercises:
Go to a busy public place with a notebook in hand. Develop your ear for dialogue. Write down snatches of overheard dialogue and imagine how they could be used in a story.
Interview a partner or co-worker about a moment in time that changed that person's life. Perhaps it was the birth of a child or death of a parent. Or an athletic achievement. Or a ceremony or a rite of passage. Now try to re-create that scene for a group of readers.
With a group, visit the same public place, and stand (do not sit) in the same general area. Write down as many telling details as possible that would help you re-create that place for a reader.
Carefully observe a group of people. As you go from person to person, write down the one or two distinguishing details that set each person apart from the others.
Keep a journal or daybook in which you experiment with some bits of narrative or anecdote. Paste in examples you've copied from good writing that you admire.
Here are some diagnostic exercises:
Read the newspaper, and grade the major stories on a scale from 1 to 10 on whether they are articles or narrative stories.
Look for articles in the paper that, with more reporting, might be converted into true stories.
Search the newspaper for anecdotes, settings, details on character, or dialogue. Can you find anything in the paper at all that actually "puts you there"?
Search the newspaper for any "gold coins" or "nut graphs."
[Editor's note: Roy Peter Clark is the director of the National Writers' Workshop.]
