Take a fairytale, myth or story you know well. Alice in Wonderland, Prometheus, Cinderella, etc.

Take a genre/setting you've never written about. Cyberpunk. Steampunk. Space Opera. Bromance. Western. You can see where this is going. Preferably, pick something that is as unlike the story you've chosen as possible, because it'll force you to be creative instead of filling in the blanks.

You guessed it - write tab A in slot B. Hopefully, if they're different enough, having to fit the story into the genre/setting rules will mean things have to change - it stops being cinderella and turns into a story with cinderella-esque themes or tropes. 

Have fun.

 

Find a long piece of music or an album, preferably instrumentalist. Ideally, it has highs and lows - parts where the music is upbeat, parts where it's dark, sections of tension, melancholia, light relief. Classical music works well as do movie soundtracks (if you skip out any pop songs), or (my personal favourites) albums by Vangelis, Jean-Michel Jarre or Enigma.

Sit down, put the album on, and start writing whatever scene the music makes you think of. A tense, underworld exploration? A happy couple? A chaotic storm of dreams? Go with the music, shifting the tone and pace of the story to match as you listen.

If you're someone who types slowly, you may find you have only time for a sentence or two before the tone changes - that's okay. Treat it as an outline exercise, in that case - you can flesh out the sentence into a paragraph or so later.

 

I'm still on my nostalgia-kick with old TV series I used to watch. And when I struggled to find mobile signal in my own house to call the internet people and complain that my supposedly-super-fast internet was actually less than dialup speeds, it occured to me what a revolutionary and disruptive element the mobile phone was to TV and movies. 

Looking back even just on the ones I've watched recently, there are so many episodes where the entire crux of the story would have been wiped out if mobile phones had existed. Need to see if someone's okay? Need to warn the government of the impending anthrax attack? Need to call a bunch of people together to take down that gang? Need to call your boss to tell him your old arch nemesis is axe-murdering people again and intends to start with you?

In these episodes, much of the drama comes from the fact that the characters need to physically travel to a working telephone, or even carry the news in person. (I have entertaining images in my head of writer-rooms across Hollywood full of writers tearing out their hair that this one little contraption scuttled so many of their tried-and-true stories.)

So, the game - take a story (not necessarily yours) that either relies on a major component of technology (eg mobile phones, the internet, cars) or relies on said technology not existing. Rewrite said story where whatever it's relying upon is the opposite. So, a pre-mobile-phone detective story gets pulled forward to the early 2000's where phones were rampant. The high-tech cyber-crime story is plunged back 50 years into barely-pubescent-computers. What aspects of the story have to change to make this fit? And perhaps more interestingly, what can you still keep of the original tale?

 

I've been househunting lately. For the uninitiated, it's an excellent, albiet frustrating, source of "optimistic descriptions". Such as calling something a 'sunroom', when it's a cupboard with a window that couldn't possibly get any sun, but it can't be called a bedroom because it's too small to fit an actual bed. Or claiming a house has three bedrooms, separate lounge, dining and meals area, when in fact the third bedroom is the lounge and the dining room, all at once. Or the 'laundry area' that has a trough, but no laundry taps. Or the 'renovated bathroom' that was renovated in the 1950's and failed to include a shower.

Frustrating as it is to discover these at inspections, the logical machinations that go into them can be fun. How would you describe the flaws in your current abode to make them sound not only acceptable, but actually attractive? Note - the description must have a plausible connection to the truth, some way that it could be seen as an accurate depiction, once you know the real facts.

 

I'm (re)drafting the beginning of a novel, and I keep coming across completely different stories I could be writing with the given setup. Totally different themes, outcomes, character arcs, all from this point. All I'd have to do, is make a different choice here, or here or here.

This works best with a largish writing group - at least eight people. You can do it by yourself, but it's a lot of work, and probably not as much fun.

First, come up with your starting situation. A character with some quirks, dreams and flaws. A situation he or she is in. A conflict.

Now, come up with a decision your character will make. A major decision or action - not icecream flavour, unless the other flavour is about to give her food poisoning. A plot point, basically - something that will change the course of the story, and even the emphasis - one way, it's a coming-of-age story about a girl with beans, the other it's a crime-solving mystery. Split your group - one half of the group takes one path, the other takes, well, the other.

Now, separately, decide where this choice has lead your hero/ine. What's the conflict now? You might have to plot a little along the way; it's doubtful that major life changing events crop up every five minutes. Again, a change that will alter the story (though it'll do so less significantly than the first one - still try for a major difference). Again, split your group, half each way. As both of the original groups have done this, you now have four story paths.

Continue making decisions and splitting until each 'group' consists of one person. That means each person has a collection of plot points and decisions to write a story about the same character from the same starting situation. 

Now go write. Everyone's working from the same character and the same starting point. But different plot decisions make the character journey totally different. The comparison by the end can be startling.

 

This is the exercise I originally wanted to write last week, before I got side-tracked by good ol' Bugs and his Pismo Beach. Travel and journeys has been on my mind in terms of story rather a lot, not only from my own recent experience but from scenes that I'm currently working on in my novel and shorts.

This one you can make up completely if you like, but I find it more entertaining and often more absurd and original if you start with your own experience and build. So - think of a journey you took where things didn't quite go to plan. Doesn't have to be a big journey - it could have been a walk to the shops, or your daily commute to work. It could even be walking to the other end of your house. But something unexpected cropped up, something that made your day just a little unusual. That's your starting point.

And then things get really weird.

Let your imagination play. Bring in aliens or mythical creatures if you want to, but often the most bizarre, dramatic and character-revealing trials can be perfectly mundane in origin.

 

I've blogged about National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) quite a bit before. Dan Wells, author of I Am Not A Serial Killer, has adapted it to his own challenge, which I think is ideal.

He's termed it NaShoStoMo - National Short Story Month. And it's not particularly national - as far as I know, it's just him - but it's great practise for a writer. It's very simple: every day of the month, he writes a complete short story. They're tiny - a minimum of 200 words, but they can be longer. They must be complete, with a beginning, middle and end. Like NaNoWriMo, they don't necessarily have to be any good. The point is to practise the art of storytelling, rather than writing. They're different disciplines - one is about constructing sentences, the other is about constructing emotion and story - and you need both.

Now I'll admit, this isn't something that fits into my life right now - I have several projects on the go that need to take precedence. But I'll definitely be saving this idea for the future (probably in an adulterated form - 200 is a little short for me, I'd rather have at least 500 words.). I think it would be especially good if you're feeling blocked on unsure of what to write.

It doesn't have to be one story a day - if you're interested, but not a prolific writer or have a very busy schedule, make it two a week for ten weeks or something similar. Just like Nano, it's entire what you make out of it.

 

 

I was going to make this about branching storylines, but the title for that inspired a different and much simpler game:

Your character is going somewhere, (where?) for a reason (why?), but they make just one simple mistake (what?) like a left instead of a right, missing a turn off, getting on the wrong train. Just one mistake. What does that one mistake to do their trip, what does it become instead?

Hint: this is the starting point of a plethora of mysteries, horrors and crime novels. Think big.

  What could possibly go wrong? Along with "what's the worst that could happen?", "nothing can stop us now," and the grimace-inducing "whew! It's over." it's a classic cue to show exactly the worst thing that can go wrong and will stop you, and that it definitely isn't over yet. And while that subverted expectation set-up is so overused and cliche'd that it practically parodies itself, it can be a great excuse for over-the-top fun with torturing your characters.

Put them in a situation. Fairly innocuous at the start, but give yourself room to catastrophise - a skiing holiday, a road trip, ducking out for 'five minutes' with your toddler left home alone.

Now - what could possibly go wrong? Start with the believable, and start writing. Let the character get the barest grasp of their catastrophe, possibly even begin to pull themselves together and make a recovery plan, and then - 

What's the worse that could happen? What's worse even than that? And worse than that?

Don't worry about how they're going to get out of it - that's their problem. Just keep throwing disaster-curves at them and see what happens. Make sure you give enough of a breather between that they actually get some reaction in, otherwise the disaster might as well be happening to a potted plant.

Rinse and repeat until baked. Some of you may want to stop at the point of absurdity, others may wish to continue on through, cackling their best Evil Author impersonation.

 

It's been a while since I've actually written here. Anyway. Adversity and conflict are generally accepted as prime ingredients for a good story, as is 'writing what you know'. So I'll combine the two into a writing game - adversity taken from my recent vacation.

You've just arrived in Heathrow airport after travelling for 30 hours (it's a long trip from Australia, plus there were flight delays). You're so tired you're about to drop, and you've waited another two hours for your luggage to be taken off the broken luggage escalator and delivered to the baggage claim area.

You'd booked accommodation in a hostel, but don't know where you're staying because they have several buildings, and assign you to the address the day before you arrive - which was meant to be before you flew, but someone dropped the ball there, and they emailed you only twelve hours before (which is when you were already on a plane - you haven't read that email, and don't know it exists yet). You're supposed to call them for them to collect you from a particular tube station, or check your email for after-hours check-in instructions.

Your phone, which was supposed to be on roaming, has no signal. Your cashpassport, on which you have loaded several hundred pounds, refuses to work. Your laptop can't find any usable wireless at the airport, and when you borrow thirty pence from someone for a phone call, you discover your accommodation has shut its office for the day.

So you have, in short, no phone, no internet, nowhere to stay, and no money.  You're exhausted. What do you do?

 

It's often a stress-relief game, but it can make a great little writing game if you put the details in.

If you could be anywhere else, right now, where would you be? With whom, doing what? What does it smell and sound like, what can you see, what can you touch and taste? What are you thinking while you're there? How long will you stay?

And what would make this idyllic moment a complete disaster?

 

Plan a locked-room mystery. What did they want? Why did they want it? Why did it have to be 'locked room'? How did they get in? How did they do the deed? How did they get out again?

And the most important part - what did they do wrong that gave them away?

SpaceJump is an old theatre warmup game I used to play back in uni.  It's probably stolen from Whose Line Is It Anyway (though this time, I didn't steal it.)

The original game

In theatre, the game needs a group of at least five or six people. The game starts with three people - the Performers -  "on the stage" who improvise a small scene. There's no planning beforehand, and no props; one person starts making something up, and the others follow along.

The rest of the group - the Audience - watch. Each of them can yell 'SpaceJump' whenever they want. Whenever someone yells 'Spacejump', the three Performers freeze in their current action, no matter what they're doing. Whoever yelled 'SpaceJump' runs in, taps one of the Performers on the shoulder and replaces them. The ex-Performer returns to the Audience, and the new Performer holds the exact position until the group unfreezes. The new Performer then takes the improvised skit in a completely new direction.

 

The energy crisis came, went, and took innovation with it. There are no flying cars, no solar miracles, no water-engines. Civilisation has to fall back on what they had left - people power and animal power.

How does the world move along without cars? What modes of transport are we using now, and how has that changed society?

 

Self-reflection is a vital part of improving any skill, and improving your life.

Write two letters: 

One to your self, one year ago. What would you tell them about the coming year? What would you have done differently? One to your self, one year hence. What do you want to make happen, what's important to you for this year?

Seal up the second and put it somewhere you'll remember to read it in a year's time. (Perhaps hide it in the christmas decorations you still haven't taken down yet.) In one year, read it. How much have you changed from the person who wrote you this letter?

 

List twenty-seven ways the world could end.

 

(Death by monkeys is taken.)

 

A horde of zombies / angry bees / robot monkeys is here, whereever you are, right now. There's no time to prepare, they're here and they want to eat you.

What do you do? How will you survive?

 

I've always loved the Crusoe game, even in primary school, despite the arguments I had with my teachers over it. I was busy devising how to build a small suspended hammock, cooking pots, bags and baskets for food gathering and knives for hunting and food preparation. They deducted marks because I didn't create a hair bush instead. Sigh.

Given we live in Australia, one of the few countries where a citizen can find themselves in real need of bush engineering, I find their priorities somewhat naff.

But I digress. The Crusoe game is very simple: You have been cast away on an island. You do not know where you are, or how long you will be there. The island appears to be uninhabited, but not inhospitable. You have with you what you can scrounge from the wreckage of the ship:

some rope assorted timber pieces (door frames, etc) a deck chair six tins of tomatoes several pairs of cotton t-shirts, too large for you 1 pair of underpants, too small for you 1 notebook, soaked in seawater (no pen)

What do you do? What do you build (and with what?) What are your priorities? What are you going to do with someone else's underpants?

You can adapt this game to suit any list of things that come to mind (if you hadn't guessed, I pulled that lot out of the air just now), just make sure that they don't have an obvious purpose. So, no swiss army knives, fire starters, axes, shovels or emergency kits.

And for those of you whose solution is to whip out their smartphone and google "How to survive on a deserted island": there's no phone signal here.

 

This one lurches towards the literary end of the bookshelf, but it can be a lot of fun.

Pick a scene, something simple. Two people having a romantic evening, and trying to scrape off the accidental tagalong. A job interview for professional base jumpers. Something that'll run itself, more or less. You're going to write it.

The trick is, you're not allowed to describe anything directly. Everything must be metaphor or simile. She did not have long black hair, but a mane of ink, or halo of midnight. A good rule of thumb:

no colours that would normally be associated with whatever you're describing no adjectives or adverbs that would normally be associated with what you're describing (eg 'tall', 'blonde' or 'energetic' for people, 'shiny' for cars, etc) no nouns that are normally related to what you're describing (no 'hair', 'feet', 'lips', etc.)

It's tricky, and you're likely to wind up with something that reads like a Picasso, but I find it inspires a joyful silliness with language, and a great bout of creativity.

Feel free to get as purple as you like - amid the hilarity, you'll often find a gem of a description that'll shine when fitted into a more natural text.

 

And again, based on last week's game of Next Chapter Please - you will need a book you've never read, by an author you've barely heard of. 

Open the book to somewhere in the first third-to-half of the book, and find the next chapter or section break. Read that chapter or section break (if it's a really short or really long chapter or section break, read 20 - 30 pages.)

Put the book down. You may want to jot down the names and events you just read, briefly. Put the book away. No looking at it anymore.

Now, instead of writing what happens next, you have to write what came before. How did they get here? What's really going on? Why is there a banana in the wardrobe?

You may find it helpful to Work Backwards, if the story's particularly complex or you can't think of a good beginning.