Creative Exercises for Fiction: Missing Scenes
“All fiction is about the essence of life”-- One of my favorite quotes I jotted down during a fiction workshop with Sheila Heti back in 2020, Writing What You’re Writing With. Sheila’s workshop was obviously fabulous and enriching and gave me the boost I needed to begin work on a new manuscript at the time. It’s workshops like these that make the writing world go round.
One of the most valuable activities we did in session was to create a list of missing scenes. There are scenes we rush through, scenes we avoid, scenes we leave out altogether. “The pleasure is in doing it,” Sheila said, and I took note once again, in regards to the work of writing. Writing fiction is all about choices, making choices without belaboring them. But sometimes we choose to leave things out, avoid them, promising to circle back later, and then we never do.
The missing scenes prompt allowed us to see what we were avoiding, where we were holding back in our stories. And thus, onward with the prompt of the day:
Write a list of missing scenes. The scenes can either be from a novel-in-progress, a short story, a flash piece, whatever! And although this falls under the category of fiction, this exercise would very well work for all genres. Aim for at least ten scenes and then choose one from the list to write today. Commit to it and find pleasure in it, as Sheila Heti encourages.
