A Writing Exercise

I found an interesting writing exercise in Storyteller that I’d never tried before. It’s on page 17 of the hardback version, 2005 from Small Beer Press. Take one of your stories and go through it paragraph by paragraph. Next to each paragraph write whether it’s “setting,” “character description,” “action,” and so on. This should give you a nice visual on how you’ve constructed the story. Too much “setting” would suggest a static story. I’m guessing that literary stories would have a lot more “character” paragraphs in them while genre stories might be heavier on “action.” I’m definitely going to try this with some of my own tales.