The Writing Yoga exercise for October

It’s October, and that means Halloween is coming! In that spirit, this month’s writing exercise is to pick a costume—write in disguise!

Your topic should be something from your life or world; the narrator is the disguise. Here are a few ways to approach this.

Try on an author with a distinctive voice

Pick a well-known author with a distinctive writing style and set them to work writing about something in your life. Here are a couple prompts to play with:

• How would Jane Austen write the meeting notes for your last meeting with colleagues?
• How would Ernest Hemingway write a candidate statement for the local elections?

You can think of others! You don’t have to be true to their best work; lean into the things that seem most identifiable.

Try on a fictional character

Fictional characters give you a whole range of possibilities. You can look to literature, movies, or television—it doesn’t matter.

Here are a couple prompts I would have fun with:

• Hercule Poirot (Agatha Christie’s fussy detective) writes about my latest hike.

• Lady Catherine De Bourgh (from Pride and Prejudice) pans one of my books in an Amazon review

How about your favorite fictional characters? Make up your own prompts if you are inspired!

Three reasons to do this exercise

1. We get to stretch the limits of our own writing voices—really useful for those of us who write nonfiction in our own voices. 
2. By writing from someone else’s perspective (even if a fictional person’s), we shift gain a different way of looking at a situation. That might yield useful insights.
3. It’s fun!

So give it a try. Play for the extremes. Have fun with it. Try different costumes on. You might discover something you enjoy. If you want to share your results here, welcome to Happy Writing in October.

Want more exercises?

Find all the Writing Yoga exercises for 2024.

Check out The Writer’s Voice for a bunch of voice exercises.