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).
You wake up one morning to find that a deep crevasse has opened up in front of your house. What do you find inside of it?
Obviously this can go in almost any direction, from the completely mundane to the utterly fantastical. Start free-writing and see where your own mind takes you.
This morning I reviewed J.D. Robb/Nora Roberts’s mystery Memory in Death. One of the things that immediately struck me when I read the opening was how over-the-top it was:
Death was not taking a holiday. New York may have been decked out in its glitter and glamour, madly festooned in December of 2059, but Santa Claus was dead. And a couple of his elves weren’t looking so good.
A page or two in, however, it was also clear that the over-the-top style was utterly deliberate—and equally fun. It was enjoyable to just let go of preconceived notions of what’s now considered trite or overly florid, and simply enjoy something larger-than-life.
Today, pick a genre that has—or at some point has had—a style or set of conventions that would now be considered over-the-top, and write a scene, page, or some other short piece in that style. Instead of trying to write it without those conventions, dive head-first into them. Indulge gleefully. Have fun with it, and try to let that sense of fun show in the result!
I got the idea for today’s exercise when I was reading Bibliolatry’s review of Immortal. The character at the center of this novel is, as the title implies, immortal, but he doesn’t know why. The reviewer spends some entertaining moments pondering what she’d really do with her days if she were immortal, and that led me to this.
Today, imagine you (or a fictional character of your creation) are immortal—you do not age and cannot die of natural causes. You or your character has been alive for at least several hundred years.
Put aside grand plans, twisted plots, and questions of how and why you came to be immortal, and focus on one single day. Wake up at the start of the character’s day, free-write through the course of it, and end at the end of it. What is a typical day like for this immortal?
I’ve read several self-help books by authors with psychology backgrounds that contend that people who focus daily on the things that make them thankful or grateful tend to be happier. (Authentic Happiness; The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die) For today’s exercise, do one of the following:
Free-write on this topic—whether it makes sense to you, why or why not, etc.
Journal your own list of what you have to feel grateful or thankful for.
Journal such a list (or write as an internal monologue) from the point of view of a fictional character, preferably a character from your own writing that you’d like to explore a bit more.
Examine how the presence or lack (or perceived presence or lack) of things to be grateful for can motivate a fictional character.
If you think of another variation on the theme to play with, feel free to post it as a comment!
One great way to pull a reluctant character into all sorts of devious dealings is to spring a family secret on him. Today, choose a character you’ve been working with and brainstorm a secret his family has been keeping from him. This could be a short-term secret of his parents, or a long-term secret that’s been handed down in his family through generations. It could be a horrible shame, a dark fate, or a deep responsibility. What is this secret? Why hasn’t he known about it before now? What effect will it have on his life? Why can he not hide from it?
Since I was recently reading (and just reviewed) Dara Girard’s The Writer Behind the Words, I have ‘the writer’s life’ on the brain. So today we have a meta-exercise. Free-write a list of emotions that get in the way of your achieving your writing goals. Pick the one that you think blocks you the most, and free-write about how it impacts you and what you might do to work with or around it.
Free-write about what you imagine a perfect holiday would be like. Cover the whole day, from morning to night, although you don’t have to write it chronologically. You don’t have to use Christmas or the equivalent as the holiday—pick any holiday, whether it’s your birthday, the Fourth of July, Passover, or the summer solstice.
Today, take a look at the following depiction of mother, or madame, nature. Write a brief scene with her as a character, preferably told from the first person (her point of view) or second (someone with her). Or, free-write or journal about this depiction of Mother Nature and what it means to you.
You might also counter this depiction of Mother Nature with one of your own, describing how you see her or, if you have artistic skills, depicting her in your own manner. How does your depiction contrast or compare with the one below? Why is it different or similar? What do you like or dislike about the original below, and why do you have your own, separate take on things?
Quick! Without thinking, pick one of the choices in each of the following sets (or some subset thereof), and then write a paragraph as to why you chose each one:
