Today, I’m going to share with you a prompt from the wonderful weekly site Booking Through Thursday, which they call simply ‘writing challenge’ and I’ll call connecting the dots. Here’s what they have to say:

• Pick up the nearest book. (I’m sure you must have one nearby.)
• Turn to page 123.
• What is the first sentence on the page?
• The last sentence on the page?
• Now . . . connect them together….

(And no, you may not transcribe the entire page of the book–that’s cheating!)

Since there seems to be some confusion among participants, here’s a little clarification for my version of this. You can connect the two sentences directly if they seem to go together, or you can invent something to go between them as a connector. If you connect them directly, free-write for a little while speculating as to what tale they might be part of or hint at, or turn them into part of a larger tale. If you invent a connector, try to end up with a full page of writing by the time you’re done (the phrases you borrowed can fall anywhere within that page).

Write a brief scene in which both snow and sand make an appearance.

Yes, this prompt really is just that simple. There are dozens of ways to spice it up or restrict it further, however, if that isn’t enough for you. Place limits based on writing time or space. Specify a genre. Specify that both the snow and the sand have to be real parts of an outdoor scene, actual conditions, not represented in some other way. Do whatever you want with it!

This morning I couldn’t resist sharing a few thoughts about certain aspects of the Cassie Edwards plagiarism scandal over at my personal blog. Apparently she took dry lines from textbook research on ferrets and copy-pasted them wholesale as pillow-talk dialogue between two lovers. Take a look at this small example quoted from this article by Paul Tolme, the original author of the ferret material:

“I read that ferrets stalk and kill prairie dogs during the night. Using their keen sense of smell and whiskers to guide them through pitch-black burrows, ferrets suffocate the sleeping prey, an impressive feat considering the two species are about the same weight.” Shiona shivers, upset by the thought of the cute animals locked in mortal combat.

Sensing her vulnerability, Shadow Bear knows just what to say: “In turn, coyotes, badgers, and owls prey on ferrets, whose life span in the wild is often less than two winters … They have a short, quick life.”

This clearly illustrates several things. One, even if plagiarism seems easy, boy can it make you look dumb. As pillow talk goes, that’s about as non-sexy as it gets. And two, if you take one type of writing and insert it into a totally different type of writing, you get something utterly wacky and often hysterical.

Today, take two totally different pieces of writing. Preferably your own, but since these are meant to be private warm-up exercises and not pieces of writing that you’ll publish, you can actually get away with using other authors’ material. (Just make sure you note that this is what you’ve done, so ten years from now you don’t uncover your little exercise and inadvertently use that material as your own.) You might choose a cookbook and a short fantasy story; a memoir and a how-to home-improvement book; or a young adult novel and a science textbook. Take material from one and substitute it into portions of the other. Substituting for dialogue in the manner of the above example is a great way to go, but see if you can’t find other possibilities as well. Get strange, get wacky, and get wild!

Besides the traditional creativity burn that mixing and matching unlikely materials often causes, this exercise can teach you a lot about style, voice, tone, and consistency.

Book Lover

One of my favorite little ten-minute writers’ creativity exercises is to take a random set of words and free-write something from them. Try to include them all in a short or short-short story, essay, etc., or just free-associate off of the combination. The challenge of incorporating wildly differing items, concepts, etc. into one short piece over a brief amount of time can definitely teach you how to access your creativity! Today, here are your words to work with:

• Onion
• Fork
• Floodlight
• Pocketwatch

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.

We is smarter
We has the internets

Here I am, back yet again with another “spam game,” in which I present you with an intriguing randomly-generated spam subject line and turn it into a writers’ exercise. This time the subject line in question was “incinerated labyrinth.” Write that phrase at the top of a piece of paper and free-associate/free-write beneath it, letting your imagination take you anywhere at all from that starting place. You could diverge outward, generalizing to terms like “fire” and “maze” or “flames” and “lost” and seeing where that takes you. Or you could literally start with the concept of an incinerated labyrinth and try to figure out what on earth you could do with that!

I love odd word-jumbles like this because they could lead anywhere, from a poignant story about firefighter’s last fire to an epic fantasy involving a great and fiery labyrinthine realm.

It’s time for another mix-and-match. One way to spur creativity is to combine unlikely or random images, words, or concepts and use them as a springboard to start writing. You can free-write using the combination as an inspiration; find a way to include the combination directly in your writing; begin a story based on the combination; etc. Today, pick one of the following combinations of words and start with it:

• minute, tool, sense

• draft, tooth
• cheating, morning, beyond
• guarantee, subject, unconventional
• people, manual, chill

Just let go of your thoughts and allow them to make unusual mental leaps, combining the words in new ways. You might even free-write a list of ideas to start with, then pick your favorite and run with it.

Infant wear for gamers’ kids!

Technorati Tags: free-writing, journaling, prompts, write, writers, writing

Today, read this page on “open source beer” and get a handle on the idea of what it means for something to be open source, if you aren’t yet familiar with the concept. Next, brainstorm a list of things that could be made open source–use free-writing and go crazy with this; don’t censor your list. Just set a timer for ten minutes and see what you come up with.

Finally, pick one item that you think could be particularly interesting–whether for its amusement or satire value, or because you think that open-sourcing it could result in something really interesting and/or valuable–and write about it! Try to pick something unusual and unexpected.

Technorati Tags: free-writing, journaling, prompts, open source, write, writers, writing

Today, instead of simply taking a prompt I provide you, you’re going to construct your own instant prompt generator. Assemble the following tools: a pen, a tiny pad of post-it notes, a container (such as a small box, a candy bowl, or even a ziploc sandwich bag) and one or more of the following:

• Your computer with the web browser open

• A dictionary or thesaurus
• A copy of the D&D “Dungeon Master’s Guide” or similar book open to one of the item-generation or treasure lists
• An art book or photo book with many inspiring images
• Some other item you can use as a list of inspiring items, names, images, etc.

Write one random word, short description of an image, item, phrase from a song lyric, or anything else interesting onto each post-it, fold it up, and put it in the container.

Starting today and doing this again any time you want a random prompt, pull out one to three slips of paper, open them up, and work their contents together into a piece of writing. Every now and then add another handful of slips to your collection and give it a shake.

Character Dictation Large Mug

Technorati Tags: free-writing, journaling, prompts, write, writers, writing

Work the following items into a piece of fiction. Start free-writing the piece of fiction itself, or free-write ideas for the fiction until you have something you think you could work with:

• A filigree wedding band

• A portrait photograph, in black-and-white, of a stern-looking woman
• A red scarf

If you want a further constraint to make things more interesting, pick one of the following genres to hold yourself to:

• Fantasy

• ‘Memoir’ (in quotes because it’s fiction written in the style of a memoir, not an actual memoir)
• Mystery

Set a timer for 15-30 minutes and dive right in!

Girl’s Best Friend Tote Bag
Shirts, mugs, ornaments, more!

Technorati Tags: fiction, free-writing, journaling, prompts, write, writers, writing