Welcome to Rejected Reality!

Writing Exercises

Written Reality: Exercises

The exercises below are designed to help you find new writing ideas. Unlike writing prompts, these methods can be used over and over. Although these exercises refer to writing a story, they could also be used to find the plot or subject for a poem, song, essay, painting, or any other creative endeavor.

In each exercise, randomness is an important factor. Don't actively search for a "good idea." Often when we do that, we discard interesting plots as "not good enough," or keep returning to the same thing that we've written before -- which has it's own built-in frustrations. Instead, let the exercise create a random plot, and then just run with the story from there. We've all heard the saying, "truth is stranger than fiction." That's because life has it's own seed of randomness to it, which puts together things that we would never have considered. Tossing a little randomness into plot generation creates unique, interesting ideas that we often wouldn't have come up with by trying to think of a "good story idea." Think of it as random acts of inspiration. Because inspiration is a pretty random thing itself.

In the Paper

Open the newspaper (or a magazine) to a random page and spread it out in front of you on the floor or a table. Close your eyes and toss a penny onto the paper. Write a story that uses the events in the article that the penny landed on as its plot.

You can use any section of the newspaper for this exercise -- including the classifieds, obituaries, or editorials.

Let Your Fingers do the Walking

Open the phone book to a random page in the white pages section. Without looking, point to a listing. Write down the name. Next, open to a random page in the yellow pages or business section. Again without looking, point to a listing or ad, then write down the name and information about that business. The person is your main character, and the business has some impact on him in the story. He might work there, or walk past it on his way to work, or accidentally receive a package intended for that business, or even inherit it from a relative he hadn't seen in fifteen years. Think about who the person is; what kind of person does the name describe? What is his background? What does he look like? What does he do for a living? Then think about what kind of connection he might have with this business.

You can continue to add information from as many listings as you want. For example, you could pick another random white pages listing to find your character's address. You could even pick one listing to get the first name and a different one to find the character's last name. Or pick a second business listing to be where your character works. Or, take the name and business type from the first business listing, and the company motto from the ad for a second business listing. You can also pick random listings to create a secondary character or nemesis for your main character. But, you must use the information from the listing that you randomly pick each time; don't search for one that "fits" well with the plot points that you already have. If you're trying to do that, you probably already have a story idea forming, and should just sit down and start writing it.

Example:
Main Character: Shelie Carter
Address: 143 Parkwood Drive
Business Name: Dial-A-Mate dating service
Motto: "We Can Make Your Business Grow!"
Plot possibility: Shelie Carter is the owner of a small boutique that sells custom-made decor. She's moderately well off, living in the middle income Parkwood suburb, but her business is starting to flounder. Dial-A-Mate dating service claims that being in a happy relationship gives people the self-confidence to excel, improving all areas of their life, including their careers. Many successful business owners have been clients over the years. After seeing a flyer for Dial-A-Mate on her car windshield, Shelie decides to check them out. And...

People Watching

Go to a coffee shop, mall, or bus station -- any place that you can sit for a while and watch people. Pay attention to the people around you, what they do, who they interact with, how they act. Imagine who they are, what they do for a living, why they're in this place, what their relationship is to the people they talk to. Jot several of these down; write stories based on these.

The Sincerest Form of Flattery

Expand a poem into a full story, or condense the main plot of a story into a poem. For example, my poem "Salinas Valley, 1932" is based on Of Mice and Men.

Role-Playing for Fun and Plot

Are you a fan of RPGs (role-playing games, not rocket-propelled grenades)? Whether you play the pen-and-paper kind or are more into computer games, write a story about your character in the game. RPGs are great ways to create characters because they make you decide multiple aspects about the character, from physical statistics like size and strength to personality points like occupation and skills -- even as far as what equipment the character has. Because of this, you already have a great start at developing the character.

Don't just rehash the events of the game. That story has already been written, by the person who wrote the game; not only will people be familiar with it already, but if you follow too closely to the game's storyline, you can run into copyright issues. Instead, take one action, one thing that happened in the game, especially something minor, and create the story around that. For example, your character found a strange room in a house, but when she searched it, there was nothing interesting in it. But what if she did find something in it -- a note, perhaps? Or a key? What would happen then? Or, write the character's background story, or create a "side adventure" for him -- something that he would do completely apart from the actual game. Think about who this character is, what made him the way he is, where he is, and what he's going to do next. Use his background to create the story. After all, that's a story itself.

Remember when creating the character that just as it's really not fun playing a game with an all-powerful character who never fails at anything, it's not interesting to read about someone like that, either. Make sure you give your character some flaws, too. In fact, you can create an interesting character both for this exercise and for game-playing by using random character generation. Assign the main stats to the character in the order that you roll them. For example, if you need to roll strength, size, dexterity, constitution, willpower, and luck, roll the dice six times. The first value that you roll goes to strength, the second one to size, and so on. When choosing an occupation for your character, count the total number of occupations available. Assign each occupation a number, from one to however many jobs there are. Then roll the dice combination that includes that many occupations. For example, if there are sixteen possible occupations, roll one ten-sided die and one six-sided die. If you roll, say, a twelve, then the twelfth occupation on the list is what your character does for a living. Do the same for skills, only after randomly picking a skill, roll three six-sided dice to determine how many skill points to assign to that skill. Repeat until all skill points are assigned. (This works great for people who hate making decisions.)

And if you're afraid that this will end up with you just writing a bunch of fantasy adventure stories, a la Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, RPGs exist in a plethora of genres, including espionage, horror, and history, just to name a few. In fact, I played my first RPG in eighth grade social studies, a game designed to teach about plantations and the pre-Civil War South.

Major Minors

Supporting and minor characters are great to fill out the main character's background, or to add atmosphere to the story's environment. We meet minor characters in our real life every day -- the postal carrier, that guy who always gulps the last of his cappuccino in the elevator on the way up in the morning, Janice in sales who always screws up the orders and needs you to fix them. But in these people's lives, we're the supporting characters. The same is true in fiction; to the minor characters, the main characters play a minor role. Take a minor or supporting character from a movie, book, or TV show and write his story. Make the main characters from the original minor characters in your story, and make the major plot of the original just a brief, passing incident in the new tale.

Plot Wanted -- or for Sale

Pick an item at random from the classifieds. Describe the item and the person selling it. Think about what the item is, what it means to the person, and why he's selling it. Write that story.

This exercise works for any kind of classified. If you pick a job ad, for example, ask yourself why the company needs to fill the position -- did someone quit, or die, or is the company expanding? What's the boss like? What's the job like? Imagine the person applying for the job, what he's like, why he needs a job, why he wants this one. What if he gets it? How does that affect him, or the boss, or the company? What if he doesn't get it.

If you choose a lost item ad, think about how the item got lost, and how it affects the person not to have it -- how it will affect her if she doesn't get it back, or if she does. What if you found the item? What would it be like getting it back to her? What if someone didn't find the item, but found something similar and took that to her. Why would he do that? Would the owner notice the difference?

The key is to keep asking yourself questions about the ad -- who, what, where, when, why, and how are your best friends.

No New Ideas

Ever feel like all of your ideas have been done already? Odds are, they have. But only you can tell the story your way; if someone else wrote a story using the same idea, it would be completely different from yours. So, instead of trying to find a new idea, reinvent an old one. Take a fairytale, folk tale, or myth and retell it from a different perspective. Set it in a different time, or place, or genre. Make the three little pigs drug dealers trying to develop the perfect "product" and the wolf the somewhat dirty vice cop trying to take them down. Or make Cinderella a surgical resident who wants to scrub in on a big procedure.

To make things really interesting, retell myths that are less well-known. Cinderella, Snow White, and Goldilocks are all very familiar. But have you ever heard of Janosik, the Robber Chieftain? Or read the tale of Bib Garazmaej? Folktales from other cultures can be a cornucopia of story ideas, and since you aren't already familiar with them, that can free your imagination.

It's not Paranoia if They're Really Out to Get You

Conspiracy theories, by their nature, are richly creative. But that doesn't mean they aren't true. What if Andrew Johnson did conspire with John Wilkes-Booth to assassinate Abraham Lincoln? What if the Masons really are part of a secret organizations that has been plotting to take over the world for more than two centuries? What if you suspended disbelief just long enough to write a story about it? Pick a random conspiracy theory and write a story as if if was true. Never assume that it isn't in your story; don't cop out in the end and make it all fake -- let the conspiracy be the reality of your story.

If you aren't familiar with conspiracy theories, just do an internet search on "conspiracy theory" -- you'll find plenty of sites to tell you all about them.

Mixed Media

Wander to a section of your local bookstore. Close your eyes, turn around, open your eyes, and write down the first book title that you see. Wander to a different section of the bookstore. Again, close your eyes and turn around. When you open your eyes, focus on the cover art of the first book that you see. Combine the title from the first book with the cover art of the second book. Write a story that would be graced by this new cover.

Example:

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