Freelance Fiction Writing Exercises


Did you know that writing exercises can actually help you write better? A lot of writers, even those that have been writing for a while, can in point of fact use writing exercises to write more quality and quantity content. Writing exercises for freelance writers can help you make more money online. These are writing exercises for freelance fiction writers that will help you accomplish more in your writing career and help you in developing better content and more of it.

Characters

Characters are extremely important in fiction writing. Creating characters in fiction writing is what makes a reader develop an interest in a piece of content and keep it. This exercise will assist in getting the antagonist versus protagonist right. Both of these are generally found in most works of fiction when developing characters.

Good guy versus bad guy is found all throughout modern fiction today. Whether we love them or hate them we look for them in our literature. As writing has evolved along with everything else so have the protagonist and antagonist individuals. Our good guys aren’t quite so good and the bad buy isn’t so bad. Have you found that yourself not quite hating the villain and not loving the hero quite so much?

One excellent writing exercise to develop characters for freelance fiction writers is to sketch two characters that are at odds with one another. These are characters that may seem to have different personality traits that are actually the same in many regards. For instance, both can be stubborn. In spite of this, one can have this trait in the negative manner in his life where the other uses this personality trait for positive results in his life.

Conflicting characters developed by freelance fiction writing in this exercises shouldn’t be identified as either antagonist or protagonist. Both of these personalities should have the capacity for good and evil. Begin writing to fashion physical descriptions of each and proceed to produce thoughts and feeling for each. The inner thoughts of each individual can be formed after the physical description creation.

Backstory

A backstory for each is important for character development for fiction writing. Keep in mind that there is a basic conflict that both are engaged in as the antagonist and protagonist. The conflict can be created by the freelance fiction writer. There is no set formula for their conflict. The backstory can be the location for the conflict or the story itself can develop it. The purpose of this freelance fiction writing exercise is development of this conflict.

Conflict, Climax and a Resolution

There is a simple formula for every fiction story produced. Each story contains and element of conflict, climax and finally a resolution.  This exercise will train the fiction writer to develop these elements. The antagonist and protagonist that were formed in the first fiction writing exercise can be used for the conflict, climax and resolution exercise.

Conflict is a clashing of the two characters in any setting. Sometimes there are more than two, but generally two is sufficient for conflict. Even for an individual with inner conflict it appears as two different people at odds with one another.

A wonderful example would be something such as a natural disaster and how each character handles the situation differently. Both the hero and the villain characters are fighting for one spot on the Space Shuttle Mission. Things along these lines make conflict in fiction writing.

Climax illustrations for this exercise for these same characters would be both candidates attempting to land the same job and one says terrible things about the other. A natural disaster hits the entire United States and only one third of the entire population survives.

Resolution is easier than the other two segments of this exercise for most freelance writers. Examples of resolution would be the job applicant that said terrible things about the other didn’t succeed with getting the position. His scheme backfired. The natural disaster example would demonstrate the last of the inhabitants left in America are able to restore order from chaos with new laws and form an even more perfect union. The natural disaster only kills off evil doers, but everyone else survives. There are multiple ways to reach one resolution. Review several when deciding which would work best for writing a fiction story.

The Theme of a Fiction Story

The theme of a story is recognized as a moral, wide spread message or broad idea that a story is revealing to readers. This particular exercise is the simplest, but can sometimes be the most difficult. For an example, if you have two characters in a story that are antagonist and protagonist and in love with the same person the theme could be a multitude of things.

The theme of a story where two people are in love with the same person may be that true love conquers all in which case only one of the characters will find happiness and win the relationship. Though, another theme could be that no one can find happiness when two men love the same woman and she doesn’t love either of them. The theme of a story is important and aids in the direction fiction writing takes.

By using the two characters developed in the first fictionwriting exercise mentioned here, freelance write a list of different ways a theme can be grown from them and the various directions that it can be taken in.

In conclusion

These are several writing exercises for fiction that can help a writer create terrific fiction content. They may seem a bit effortless on the surface and not worth review, but for many writers they help may their writing career in fiction a little less stressful and better overall. Take a little time to examine them and try a few to determine if they can make your freelance fiction writing better and easier overall.
 
pic is courtesy of kozzi.com

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