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.
