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).

There’s a meme going around the book blogging community that goes roughly like this: you open a book to a certain page, find a line a certain number of sentences into that page, and then quote the next several sentences. At face value this sounds kind of uninteresting, but in practice it results in some absolutely fascinating out of context quotes. When you reach deep into a story and take several lines on their own like that, they can often spur the imagination in interesting ways.

Today, pick up a book and open to a random page, preferably one at least a little ways in and preferably among pages you haven’t read yet (even better, from a book you haven’t read yet). Locate the third sentence on the page, and then copy down the following three lines.

Using these three lines as the beginning or end of your piece (or inserting them somewhere in the middle), free-write for five to fifteen minutes.

Mystery Addict
Where’s the body?

Humour - like romance, like drama, like excitement - needs boundaries. It needs rules, lines, differences, be they social (as in Fawlty Towers), cultural (Borat), gender-based (Tootsie) or moral. As in sex.

This, arguably, is a primary purpose of organised religion. In giving us rules to break it lets us sustain into adulthood a child’s delight in naughtiness. Childish, sure, and deeply, almost definitively human, the urge to transgress is also a constant, renewable source of creative energy.

And the more forbidden the sex - the more illicit, immoral or commercial - the greater the potential excitement, creativity and fun.

The above entertaining quote comes from this opinion piece on legalization of the sex industry in The Sydney Morning Herald by Elizabeth Farrelly. In this case, however, I’m more interested in it for its statements regarding creativity, energy, and humor. Today, write about the subject of boundaries, mores, morals, and their relationship to creativity. How do you think a culture’s mores relate to the creative output of that culture’s people?

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.

I know it’s a little odd for me to link to the same blog in two successive posts, but Chip’s Quips once again has some great quotes that make me want to pass them on. This time they’re quotes from Euripides in which Sterling has found some relevance to today. For example,

O gods, spare me the sight
of this thankless breed, these politicians
who cringe for favors from a screaming mob
and do not care what harm they do their friends,
providing they can please a crowd!

  –Hecuba, 255-259, William Arrowsmith translation

Today, do any of the following:

• Write about one of the quotes in the linked blog article and its relevance (or not, as you see it) to today’s world and events.
• Write a scene or story inspired by one of the quotes in the linked post.
• Pick out one to three other quotes from at least 500 years ago that you also believe have great relevance to today’s events.
• Carry out one of the first two options but use a quote from the third.
• Write about the eternal nature of mankind—our politics, governmental struggles, wars, and so on, whether in essay format or fictional format.

We is smarter
We has the internets

I recently found a wonderful blog of inspiring and thought-provoking quotations and such: Travis Eneix. In particular the following quote caught my attention:

Now is the time to get serious about living your ideals. Once you have determined the spiritual principles you wish to exemplify, abide by these rules as if they were laws, as if it were indeed sinful to compromise them. Don’t mind if others don’t share your convictions. How long can you afford to put off who you really want to be? Your nobler self cannot wait any longer.
— Epictetus

Today, do one of the following:

• Write about an ideal you’d like to get serious about. Write about how you might make it a rule of your life. Write about how you can abide by it as though it was the core of your deepest religion.
• Do the same as above, but from the point of view of a fictional character you’d like to write about.
• Write up a set of ideals as though they were the laws of a fictional land. Be as idealistic, optimistic, and grandiose as you like.

Ten thousand fools proclaim themselves into obscurity, while one wise man forgets himself into immortality.
—Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 - 1968)

I can imagine a good handful of exercises based on Mr. King’s quote:

• If you prefer to journal about issues that are important to you, try journaling about what this quote means and/or how it applies to you, your role models, today’s politicians and celebrities, various famous people from the past, and/or the person from your life you consider to be the most wise.
• If you prefer to write non-fiction essays, write an essay about what Mr. King meant and/or how it applies to you, your role models, today’s politicians and celebrities, various famous people from the past, and/or the person from your life you consider to be the most wise.
• If you prefer to write fiction, write a story that includes a fool who proclaims himself into obscurity, and a wise man who forgets himself into immortality.
• Write a character sketch of a fool who proclaims himself into obscurity, and/or a wise man who forgets himself into immortality.
• Write about the nature of foolishness and wisdom or obscurity and immortality.
• Explore how you might forget yourself into immortality.
• Explore whether you believe this quote to be true, or, if it was once true, whether it still is now.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson

Apply this Emerson quote to the main character of your current story or novel–how does your character’s opinion of the world reveal his character? What might it reveal that he doesn’t want revealed, or that he would deny if it was brought to his attention? How can you use this to subtly explore him within your writing without having to spell everything out for the reader?

You could also journal about how this quote applies to you. How do you see the world? What might this reveal about you? Try to find at least one difficult truth about yourself in Emerson’s quote.

“I don’t tell my characters what to do. I just take dictation!”
Shirts, mugs, more

Today I have another quote from Michael Michalko’s second edition of Thinkertoys (reviewed):

In Greek, the word dialogue means a “talking through.” The Greeks believed that the key to establishing dialogue is to exchange ideas without trying to change someone’s mind. This is not the same as discussion, which from its Latin root means to “dash to pieces.” The basic rules of dialogue for the Greeks were: “don’t argue,” “don’t interrupt,” and “listen carefully.”

Today, treat every conversation–including those you hold online–as though it fell under the old Greek definition of a dialogue. Force yourself not to argue or interrupt. Listen carefully to those you speak with. Offer up your thoughts and ideas for consideration without attempting to convert or change the minds of others. Treat those you speak with as your equals in conversation and examine their opinions accordingly.

At the end of the day, write about your experiences. How easy or difficult was this? How well did you succeed? How did it change the dynamics of your conversations? What did you learn from it?

While we haven’t yet had a chance to put in redirects from the old blogs since we still have one to go, I might as well start posting new exercises here so there’s something for folks to play with when they get directed here. In the meantime, if you see any rough edges do let me know–we haven’t quite finished up yet and might have missed something.

I’m currently reading Michael Michalko’s second edition of Thinkertoys (review), and found a quote that I think could inspire some interesting writing:

A lion has to be a lion all its life; a dog has to be a dog. But a human being can play with and bring about one of a huge number of different identities; the one he finally chooses will be determined by neither reason nor common sense, but by imagination.

There are many different ways to use this quote in an exercise. Journal about it. Free-write based on it. Create a character from it. Use it as the basis of a story. Pick something and go!