Yesterday you came up with adventure starts, and today you’ll build on that.
First, pick one of your adventure starts at random. Write down four things you could reasonably expect to see happen on that adventure.
Next, write down five things that you totally wouldn’t expect to see happen. Get wild and crazy. Make sure you’re doing this part free-write style so you don’t have time to think about whether any of these events or twists are ridiculous, silly, or over-the-top.
Finally, play around with various combinations of these events to see if you can come up with new and surprising ideas for where to take your adventure. If you come up with something you like, write out a one-paragraph summary of the adventure that makes it sound exciting, interesting, and unusual, and that hints at surprises to come.
When I say that you shouldn’t be afraid to get wild and crazy, I mean it! It’s by not censoring ourselves in these early steps that we find our most creative ideas. Most of these ideas won’t survive unchanged to any sort of final draft, but bits and pieces of them might be incorporated in some form or another, or they might lead to further inspiration. Write down anything and everything, whether it’s “the protagonist discovers he has an evil twin from an alternate universe” or “the protagonist finds out the moon is made of pistachio ice cream.”
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