Issa Dioume is passing on some of Ursula Le Guin’s writing advice in the form of exercises. This one is to write a short scene of less than 150 words using whole, grammatical sentences of no more than seven words. This is a condensed scene from my WIP.
The watch slams the door closed again. Will she come? The message surely won’t leave her indifferent. Énna is her favourite brother. Minutes pass, and the postern gate opens. Aoife stands there, two gallowglasses behind her. Her eyes widen in surprise.
“You? Why has Énna sent you?”
Art’s eyes shift to the gallowglasses. Their hands grip sword hilts. He fumbles for something in his cloak.
“Here.”
He reaches out a hand. Aoife steps forward to take the message. His empty hand grabs her arm. He pulls her outside; a gallowglass lunges. One by one, Art can take them. His sword slices across the Ostman’s throat. The return stroke catches the man behind. Art whistles for his horse, turning.
“You are coming with me.”
The words die in his throat. Aoife faces him, drawn sword in hand. Her eyes flash in fury.
Interesting! It does work well. Concise and precise. Right to the point!
It’s restricting too, so I wouldn’t want to keep it up for long, but then a tense scene shouldn’t go on for pages, should it?
Yes, timing and tempo need to be managed efficiently!
One thing that I always think sounds very amateurish is the ‘chase’ scene where the monster/murderer ‘is so close I can feel it’s breath on the back of my neck’ for paragraph after paragraph.
It is clichéd. Very much so. Which is problematic.
To me it shows that the author isn’t in the action with the characters, but sitting behind a screen tapping away lots of words that show what a good writer he/she is.
Haha 😂 that’s an interesting way of seeing it. Hmm, or that they are slowly figuring things out?
totally disconnected with the way the human body and mind function!
Nice! Thanks for sharing this exercise.
It’s always worth trying out these things.
Agreed.
I went through this book earlier this year – the best book on writing ever! The exercises are all great. I like your response to this one.
Thanks Trent. We never stop learning.
Well done!
Thanks Alethea 🙂
🙂
That worked very well! Excellent story and writing, Jane!
Thank you! I appreciate these exercises as I hate writing fight scenes (still) and like to get them over with as quickly as possible.
Yes, it does create a tenseness and it is more like the way our minds bop around in crisis. Will try this experiment and see how it goes.
Brevity is always a good exercise. Writers on the whole tend to be long-winded 🙂
Thanks for this. A device to keep in mind. Inspiring.
It certainly helps get the action scenes out of the way as quickly as possible 🙂
It does increase the tension. (K)
It does. It’s the kind of scene I’d use sparingly though.