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Write a scene in which one character is telling the other character something, and the second character does not believe them but doesn't want to say so directly. The catch? Don't communicate the second character's disbelief directly to the reader via their thoughts. Instead, only communicate their disbelief through their dialogue, expressions, or actions.

There are lots of ways the second character could react that doesn't contradict the first character but clearly shows that they don't believe them. They may glance away and clam up, or otherwise try to hide their expression. They may try to change the subject. They may pretend they didn't hear.

Here's a real challenge: self-critique.

An important part of writing is reading what you've written and identifying what you've done well and what could be improved. Is your writing clear? Did you get your point across? Is your grammar good? Is your style good? Did you head-hop? Does what happens in the passage make sense, or did you forget to mention that Bob opened the door before Mary walked through it? These are just a few of the things you need to consider for your writing.

Today, go back and read some of your writing that you did at least two years ago. It doesn't have to be something you posted, and you don't need to read more than a few paragraphs, but I encourage you to read a few samples, not just one.

Now, choose one of those samples and critique it. Identify at least one thing that you did well and write a paragraph explaining what it was and why it was good. Then, identify at least one thing that could be improved, write a paragraph explaining what it was and why it wasn't so good, and how you would fix it. For bonus points, actually fix it. (Though the real challenge here is the writing of the critique, not the fix.)

Your character is sitting in whatever room or place you're in right now, and this is the first time they've been there. Write a paragraph or two in first-person, in which they describe where they are.

Things you might want to keep in mind:

The character will probably only describe what they're interested in, or at least would pay more attention to those things. For example, an engineer might describe the different tools next to the fireplace in detail, and ignore the pictures on the mantle. You can use this description to sketch the character's personality as much as to describe the room itself.
The reader should be able to picture whatever it is that the character describes.

Word challenge today:

deity

For your ten minutes today, write about yourself. You do not have to post what you come up with -- you can just post that you did it.

You might talk about something that happened to you in your past, or something that you're hoping for in the future. You could talk about something great that's happened to you recently, or perhaps things that you've been thinking about.

You can also mess around with various ways of expressing this. It's probably easiest to think about writing a journal entry, or maybe even an autobiography, but instead, you could write it as a conversation with a friend, or as a letter to a friend. You could even write yourself as a character in a novel, speaking to another character or having an internal monologue.

Claustrophobia... what's the opposite of that, liking tight spaces? Claustrophilia? Anyway, today's challenge is to write about a single character having to traverse a tight space, like worming through the only exit hole after a cave-in, or doing maintenance on the Enterprise's Jeffries tubes, or trying to access their house's plumbing through the crawlspace.

The reader should know how the character feels about doing what they're doing. But, for an extra challenge, don't have the narrator or the character themself directly say what the character is thinking or feeling. Instead, craft the descriptions of the situation and the actions to communicate that. (You know, like, a person who considers the situation a challenge might "exert" to pull himself out, but someone who is really unhappy might "struggle".)

This is me losing track of time for the past week, seriously. I actually really couldn't tell when it was weekend and when it was weekday. Then I thought, "Hey, I haven't done anything in Ten Minutes for a while," and here I am. So sorry!

Today's challenge: Characterization. Choose three very different characters, who all speak and express themselves very differently. They do not need to be in the same fandom. Note down at the beginning of your work which three characters you chose. Then, write a few lines of conversation between them, about anything at all, but without dialogue tags or any prose. Your reader should be able to identify who's speaking by what they choose to say in the conversation and how they speak alone.

Today's challenge is not directly a writing challenge, but a conceptual challenge, or perhaps a design challenge. You're going to think long and hard (for ten minutes, anyway) about a character.

Take a character from your fandom or original work that you know very well and write down at least one of each of the following things.

1. A personality trait that comes out through how they speak (e.g. things they say, what words they choose, tone of voice)
2. An event from their past that either was traumatic or they regret a lot (or both!)
3. Some skill that they have trained in and are very good at

Then, place that character in an AU that's very different from their original world, such as an alien race, a different time period, or, if you want to stay in the same time period, a different nation/cultural background or even a wildly different socio-economic stratum. Now, do the same thing: design the character in this new world and write the same three things as listed above.

What you're doing is designing the character for the new AU but adapting what's important about them to the new world so that they're still the same character. This is a good exercise for learning to create your own characters.

----

Example: Donna in Doctor Who is contemptuous of people she thinks are less intelligent and that comes out in her sarcastic jabs at people. One traumatic event in her past was the events of "The Runaway Bride" and the betrayal and then death of her fiance. She is very good with numbers and knows how companies and offices (and company politics) work very well.

In a Regency AU, let's make Donna a genteel lady, but she's nouveau riche, having grown up in a successful merchanting family that bought their way into gentility. So, she still has the London accent and the non-genteel manner of speaking, and she's not afraid to insult her less-intelligent, less-capable peers in a crude manner. She's unmarried, but only because she had been engaged to a gentleman who'd broken off the engagement (a big no-no back in the Regency) and married someone else -- that's Donna's traumatic event. Having grown up in a merchanting family, she knows how to run a shop and a house.

For today's challenge, describe a group activity from the level of the group, not the individuals in the group. As an example, you could describe an army setting out on a march across the country, and you might say that from the battlements of the fort, it looks like a long line of ants. But you wouldn't talk about individual soldiers in the army and what they're doing.

Some ideas: a play in a team sports game, traffic on a highway, a bus of tourists visiting a scenic lookout, children going out for recess.

Word challenge today, a word with several unrelated meanings:

sharp

Is that the edge of a knife? Or a tone of voice? Maybe it's how a person dresses, or a musical term, or a pungent odor, or even a description of flavor (cheese, anyone?). Or something else entirely?

Today's challenge: Write a paragraph or two in which your characters respond to a threat. They could fight it, run away, try to talk it down, whatever. The caveat is, this is in the middle of your book, so don't set up the threat or tell the reader what it is or give backstory. This is just the middle of a chapter, so make it feel that way.

It's a hot summer where I am, sweaty and uncomfortable. However, a good imagination can do wonders, cooling you off even in heat like this.

For your ten minutes today, write something to cool off your reader, to make them feel that sprinkler as they run through it, or the spray of snow as they ski down the mountain, or the salty wind at the prow of a fast ship -- or whatever else comes to mind.

Today's challenge is an exercise in just getting words on paper, without any thought about writing a complete story, developing plot or characters, or polishing your writing. Below is a sentence from a book. Copy it into your writing space. Then, starting with it, write whatever comes to mind.

She strained her eyes, trying to see through it, and could just make out possibly a globe of some sort, floating in mid-air.

Think about the past couple of days and choose something that you did or happened to you. It should be something that lasted no more than a minute -- it can either be some short event, like a phone call or wrong number, or a small part of a longer event, such as locking the front door, getting in the car, and starting it up to get to your destination.

Now, write that thing as if it happened to your chosen character. Translate the event to whatever the character's situation is (for example, if it was Luke Skywalker, "getting in the car and starting it up" might be "climbing into the X-Wing and starting the launch sequence).

Today is a non-fiction challenge, because writing non-fiction takes the same skills as writing fiction does: you not only need to be informative and instructive, but also engaging and entertaining.

Your challenge today is to write a bit about something you love. Not a person, but a thing or a subject, for example, your favorite childhood toy, the class you took that you enjoyed the most, somewhere you traveled that you think about when you want to relax and be happy. You could talk about the one thing you like to collect. Or you could talk about a gift someone gave you that you thought was really special. The possibilities are endless.

Focus on conveying to the reader your love of your topic and why you feel that way. It's not enough to say, "I love this thing"; you should be trying to reveal the wonders of the thing to the reader so that they love it, too.

Today's challenge is figurative language, but not in the way you'd expect.

Think of an example of figurative language, such as a simile ("They fought like cats and dogs."), personification ("My heart leapt when I saw it."), hyperbole ("I have a million things to do today."), or an idiom ("A rolling stone gathers no moss.") -- basically anything that conveys a meaning without directly saying it. After all, the first example is saying that they were arguing and bickering fiercely without saying it directly, and we know that the people being described weren't actually cats and dogs.

Now, write a paragraph or two about the literal meaning of your chosen phrase. For example, for the simile, describe an actual fight between cats and dogs. Or, for the personification, describe someone's heart actually leaping. (It'd probably be very painful, and possibly lethal.)

Basically, the idea is to learn and understand what figurative language is by looking at the exact opposite.

Your challenge today is to do something completely new.

Find a single sentence (just one, no more than that) of prose (not dialogue) that you have written -- anything, whether it's been finished and posted or it's a work-in-progress -- and that is at least twelve words long. Rewrite the sentence in some way you've never done before.

Some ideas:
* Emulate the style of an author whom you've never tried to emulate before.
* If it's a drama, imagine instead that it's a comedy and make the sentence humorous, or vice-versa.
* Write it as a line in a poem. Bonus points if it's a sonnet and you do a rhyming couplet in iambic pentameter.
* Switch the viewpoint to second-person present tense. (This assumes you've never written second-person present tense before.)
* Look up synonyms for every word in the sentence and rewrite it using them.

Sorry for being really delinquent on posting challenges. Things have been a bit of a mess lately, but, well, excuses are just excuses.

Today's challenge: Write a couple of paragraphs describing an animal or a group of animals doing something. It could be a horse eating in a pasture, or a basket of hamsters scrambling to get out, or a mother whale swimming with her calf, or whatever. Your goal is to really make the reader see what's happening. Note: these should be real animals, so they shouldn't speak nor think like humans do.

Today's challenge is a non-fiction challenge. We tend to think that "writing" means writing a novel or other fiction, but writing non-fiction uses the same skills. Successful non-fiction is not only informative and clear, but also engaging and entertaining.

For your ten minutes today, first, select a subject area that you are very familiar with -- it might be a favorite hobby of yours, or it might be your job, or it might be some subject that you're very interested in and have studied a lot. Now, select a particular focused topic within that subject. Write a few paragraphs explaining that topic to the reader, with a slant toward showing why it's done the way it is.

Remember that you want to keep the reader engaged in your topic just as much as you'd want to keep them engaged in your novel, so use the same skills you use in your fiction writing to bring the topic to life. You might create a character and show them doing the topic, or you might relate an anecdote about someone doing it incorrectly. Or you might relate the historical event that started the topic in the first place.

As an example, if I were writing a book about how to draw blood (the word for this is "phlebotomy", and the person who takes a blood sample at the doctor's office is a "phlebotomist"; no, I have no knowledge about this topic, it's just an example), I might write about the importance of injecting the needle cleanly and hitting the vein well by relating a true story in which my sister had a phlebotomist miss the vein and what they did to try to hit it. I'm not going to write it here, but my sister said it was very painful and left a big bruise.

Wow, it's been a week since the last challenge. Sorry!

Today's challenge: Write a paragraph in which a character gets injured. It doesn't have to be a serious injury - even a paper cut is fine - and you don't have to describe the injury or how it happened, but describe the character's reaction to the injury, such as wincing, going "yipe!", jerking the hand back, and sucking on the cut.

Don't include any other characters in scene, to avoid the temptation of turning the scene into their coming over to help or comfort the injured person.

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