Try Short Forms to Support Your Big Project

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Image by keshavnaidu via Pixabay

In a new blog post, Mary Carroll Moore suggests two exercises that encourage you to start small when working on a big project. “Sometimes we have to get small to get big, with our books,” she says. “Short pieces of writing, taken as breaks from my books teach me a lot–about pacing, dialogue, the tension arc, beginnings and endings.”

Moore’s exercises are:

  • Create a haiku or short poem about your book in its current form. Try to have the beginning, the ending, and the main conflict included in a few brief words. Add lines about the main setting and the emotional focus of the book.
  • Write a five-page short story about one of your main characters, your narrator, or your potential reader. Put this person into an event or challenge that brings out something unexpected in them.