First, click through the thumbnail below and look at the full-size photo. Then, set a timer for 10-30 minutes and free-write one of the following:

• A description of what’s inside the books.
• The actual contents of the books themselves.
• A story in which the books play a part.

I just finished reading and reviewing two books by Tobias S. Buckell, Crystal Rain and Ragamuffin. These are incredibly well-written books, and one of the things that impressed me the most about them is the very vivid, unusual, and natural-feeling world they take place in. Creating a whole new fictional world is tough, particularly a futuristic one with all sorts of funky technology; making it feel wholly real and natural takes talent and skill. Today, practice moving from concept to fictional reality by doing the following:

First, write down five adjectives or abstract concepts that describe your universe, or major parts of it. This can range from something as simple and vague as “frightening” to something like “humans are always on the run and scared.”

Now, for each of those abstract notions, write out five very specific examples of things in your universe that convey and prove that concept. Concepts are things that will help you to organize your thoughts when building a universe; specifics turn the universe into a coherent fictional reality.

Here’s another round of a few questions you can ask of one of your fictional characters to help you flesh him or her out a bit more. The number you decide to answer will probably depend on how much detail you go into—the more inspiration you find in a single question, the fewer you need to explore on the whole.

• Altars: What are the most private and personal day-to-day expressions of religion or spirituality in your character’s life?
• Alterations: What changes would your character most like to make to his or her daily life?
• Acids: What has the greatest ability to eat away at your character’s strength or resolve?
• Application: What motivation best serves to convince your character to apply him- or herself most fully to a task?

  Any evocative word can serve as a starting point for such explorations; you can always open a dictionary to a random page in order to look for more. I like having a wide variety of questions to choose from simply because you probably want to answer different questions for each character you explore, and you might find one question inspiring but not another. However, I don’t recommend trying to answer a huge number of questions for a single character—you can end up burning yourself out on the character before you get to your actual writing! Just pick a few highlights and use those. Even one or two good questions can teach you a lot about a character.

  If you prefer to write non-fiction rather than fiction, always feel free to ask character-building questions of yourself and journal about the answers.

Here’s a truly nifty prompt generator for you: the Special Projects Generator. You can press the shuffle button, or you can use the arrow keys to go up or down in a given category. This yields a three-word phrase describing a unique ‘project,’ such as:

• changeable rubber garden
• do-it-yourself glitter furniture
• ingenious collapsible magazine
• dramatic morphing orchestra

Use one of the above or go to the site and generate your own favorite. Then do one of the following with it:

• Write up a proposal (deadpan or over-the-top silly) for this project.
• Write a story in which this object, device, or whatever appears or has a role.
• Imagine the kind of world in which such a device would be commonplace, and explore it.
• Imagine that you’re a venture capitalist and someone has just given you a presentation on this project. Justify why you would or wouldn’t fund it, either seriously or or not.
• Explain what the project is and how we absolutely, positively need it in our world. Make as compelling an argument for it as you possibly can, no matter how silly the item is (in fact, the sillier the better).

I found this link at the PHS Computer Project Lab’s Monday Links for Educators.

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I love creating characters from interesting photos and pieces of art that I come across. Today I happened upon this photo by oleg dou; click through for the full version:

Fantasy queen? High priestess? Evil witch? The lead performer in an opera or stage play? Mystic? What do you imagine this woman as?

What if… you suddenly stopped sleeping? What would you do after one day? Two days? Three days? Four? Five? Six?

What caused this situation? What effects does it have on you? You can try to imagine what would really happen in such an instance, or get a bit wild & woolly with your imaginings. The cause of your insomnia could be psychological, biochemical, supernatural, drug-induced, self-induced, magical… you name it.

How different would the world look through insomniac eyes? How would your interactions with others change? How would your priorities change?

Free-write or fictionalize as you please!

One of our T-shirts that’s been picking up in popularity of late bears the slogan, I’d love to help you, but I’m dead. We had a particular context in mind for this when we created it, but of course that context isn’t necessarily obvious at first glance. We knew this and deliberately left it this way, because we thought it was one of those sayings which could be interpreted in a number of ways and which might, therefore, be more enjoyable to people without the context, allowing them to create their own.

Today, write something that creates your own context for this saying. You could use it as the first line of a story or as the inspiration for a piece of writing, or you could brainstorm a list of possible contexts to see how many you can come up with.

The next time you read a book or story that you really don’t like (or, if you can think of one you read recently or remember well, go ahead and use that), sit down and fill at least two sides of a sheet of paper (or set a timer for 15-30 minutes) and dissect not just what you didn’t like about it, but how you would go about improving on it.

If you think the characters are flat, how would you make them interesting? If the characters take actions to further the plot that make no sense for them, how would you alter the plot or create a justification for those actions? If the author brought up a plot point and then dropped it again without resolution, how would you either excise that plot or, better yet, bring it full circle and complete it? If the book’s climax lacks punch, how would you amp up the tension? If the pacing of the action is off, how would you improve it?

These are the sorts of things it can be difficult to do to your own work because you’re so close to it and have difficulty seeing it from any sort of distance. Sometimes it’s much easier to learn on other people’s work and then apply the same techniques to your own. A great way to do this is through critique groups or workshops, but if you don’t have access to those, you can try this method instead.

Sometimes I post images here, something to inspire your thoughts with visual stimulation. For the most part I like to link to photographs of people, because they can become the most interesting characters when you stop to imagine who they might be. They contain all the little details of everyday life like wrinkles, laugh lines, moles, birthmarks, smeared makeup, etc. that many artists might leave out. Normally I prefer to link to photos because I think they stretch our imaginations and bring a character to life in ways that other pieces of artwork might not. Sometimes, however, something different is in order. Today, use the following beautiful portrait piece to inspire a character word-portrait:

Sephiroth: Into the Lifestream by =ramy on deviantART

Imagine who this person might be and what they’re up to. If you don’t want to write in a genre that directly suits the imagery, then imagine that this piece of artwork is a real person’s idealized self-image, and speculate on the sort of person who would imagine themselves this way!

Recently I suggested to someone who was cleaning out junk drawers that they take their unidentifiable finds and turn them into creativity exercises. They did so, and deliciously decided to share the finds with us. Today, check out their included photo and come up with your own explanation for what on earth that metallic item could be. (If you know what it really is, no cheating and relying on reality!)

Sometime when you want some additional inspiration, go clean out a bunch of your own drawers and look for something similarly unidentifiable. Put it on a table in front of a sheet of paper and write down any idea you can think of for what it might be!

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