A Rant Writing Exercise

I’ve been toying with the idea of how to make a writing prompt for 2020 and 2021 for a while. Most of the angles I thought of at first were better for psychological release than improving your writing (It’s been a hard year for most people!). Then, it hit me – a rant writing exercise.

Everyone has something they can rant about right now (and for once, using “everyone” isn’t even hyperbole). Plus, high emotion scenes can be some of the hardest to write believably, so we can make it useful.

Using a Rant as a Writing Prompt

Step 1: Find or Go on a Rant

First, we need a rant. If you’re feeling lazy, or you want to see what rants look like for different people, open facebook, and you’ll soon have all the fodder you need (sad, but true).

If you want to make your own, try turning on the recorder on your phone and pretend you’re talking to someone. Then, let loose. If it’s a topic you feel strongly about, it won’t take much to get started. Most of us have plenty to vent about after the past year.

Once you have it recorded, go back and transcribe it. You can skip the beginning if it takes you a while to warm up. And, yes, you could write it instead of saying it the first time; however, for most people, saying it will result in a looser, less restricted rant. Which is more realistic and what we want.

Step 2: Pick a Character, Situation, & a Topic.

Now, you need to decide who is going to be talking (the ranter), and what that character is ranting about. You should also decide whether they are ranting to or at someone. Whether they’re face-to-face with a person or ranting alone can definitely influence how free they are with their language (well, depending on the character).

You can pick anything, but this is going to be most interesting if you pick a very different situation from the one you ranted about. A fantasy or science fiction world would be especially fun.

Step 3: Rewrite the Rant in Character

Take the character you picked, the situation, and the topic, and rewrite your rant with that in mind. In fact, you can rewrite it several times at different levels.

1. Change topic keywords only. You could probably have a decently effective rant by simply switching out the words related to the topic.
2. Change reasoning method. Some rants or arguments are going to have more support for why the other person is wrong. Some are going to have more insults to the other group. Some are going to have more listing awful behavior. If the current set-up isn’t quite right for your new topic, situation, or character, you can change which type this rant is. To keep the value of using the original rant, though, try to follow the patterns – pacing, tangents, etc. used in the process.
3. Add in more personal tidbits from your character. If it’s fantasy, switch out existing curse words for the ones that character would use. If the character has an accent or speaks in a different style than you, adjust for that.

Option Step 4: Analyze the Rant

You can get some good practice writing rants with just steps 1-3. If you want to take it a step further though, you can try to breakdown the original rant and other rants (again, check FB if you need more) for patterns.

Here’s some examples of styles I’ve noticed in rants:

• Sentences getting shorter and more consonant as the person goes on / gets more worked up,
• Degenerating into lists of insults, and
• Breaking off in mid-sentence as people get more upset.

If you look for patterns of speech like that, those all become tools that you can use when you’re writing a new rant. They’d probably help with arguments, too.

Optional Step 5: Share Your Rant

I can’t speak for everyone, but I’d definitely be interested in seeing the results of this exercise! So comment below with your rant or to tell us about your experience.