Tickle the Mind

Take a walk to search for writing ideas

Let the imagination lead as you creep into crevices. 

Discover a mystery near the bird bath.

Who left the cushions in disarray?

 The mouse asked for cheese. The Duck needed his quackers.  

What did the ram say?

From stone, the wings burst into feathers. The pelican flies.

Let a sequence of unrelated situations tickle the mind.  Write about it.

Writer's Field Trip - Dialogue to Create Power Struggle

Writers enjoy field trips to study human behavior. People-watching provides story ideas and ways to describe personalities and conflict.

Take a notebook with you and spend an hour or two at a sports bar or restaurant.  Notice couples, their interactions on several levels and write their details in body language.

Watch and record:

l.   How do they walk in together?
2.  Notice their approaches to each other and the menu.
3.  Write how they address the wait persons. Use their choices of food to define them or create conflict. Do they share food?
4.  Examine the details of their body language and facial gestures.
5.  Can you imagine what's going on in their conversation just by observing their silent language?

Design a story or poem entirely in dialogue that involves a power struggle set at a restaurant. Use gestures of hands and arms to show emotions and action. Create a current to run beneath your dialogue to reveal an aspect of their relationship?

Write Like an Outlaw

What has been spoiled through human mistakes can be made good again through human work.- Richard Wilhelm

Become an outlaw and break writing rules as an exercise.  Take a detour and sneak past the rules.

Make a list of the correct grammar, syntax, and style issues you wish to attack before your begin your destruction.

For example:

Omit a verb and see where the sentence action goes.

Dangle a participle.

Over-modify nouns with stacked adjectives.

Overwhelm verbs with adverbs.

Avoid subject and verb agreements and use a singular subject with a plural verb.

Add commas everywhere to splice sentences.

Use myriad exclamation points rather than have the sentence do the work.

Split infinitives.

Misspell.

Write for ten minutes making outrageous grammatical and syntactical mistakes.

Take detours into kooky.

Use apos'trop'h'es to emphasize a musicality in words.

Create and dabble in your own language.

Make up words to suit your style.

Seize Silliness.

Write in two or three languages at once.  Esta ici now?

Just go fliberative.  Jibberate as you fabricate.

Notice what happens when you intentionally break the rules. Does it help to shake up stale concepts?  Do you feel energized and on a hunt for surprises?  Take a risk you haven't tried before.

Write about your experience as an outlandish outlaw of writing rules.