"You must learn ..."

No attention

 

No attention

What's a warm up?

Excuses excuses

"If God exists, I hope he has a good excuse." -- Woody Allen

So, what *is* his or her or its excuse?

You're an investigative reporter -- here, in the future, in the afterworld? -- and you've tracked down Earth's god. Was creation of the Earth a cosmic joke? Was it a child's experiment? Was it a project the creator forgot about? Or can love and war and compassion and tragedy all be logically explained (though perhaps not exactly in a way the denizens of Earth might appreciate!)?

Did the project turn out as God expected? What surprised him or her and why?

At the bottom

 

At the bottom

What's a warm up?

Sleep talking man

Sleep talking. No one could make this stuff up. And you don't need to! The Sleep Talkin' Man's wife's is taping what he says each night and transcribing the good parts. (There are a few sound bites too.)

I'll let you take it where you will. Some of the lines could make for a very forthright character ;-) Some of the more cryptic lines might be prophetic. Or perhaps he's a spy and he wants to tell his wife what's going on but his spy training only allows it to come out coded in his sleep. Or ...?

The maze

 

The maze

What's a warm up?

"The act of writing ..."

Happiness in slavery

 

Happiness in slavery

What's a warm up?

Fairy tale detective

One more! (I think ;-)

You're a detective in the world that inspired fairy tales. Whether you preserve the medieval elements of the society or modernize it or cartoonize it is up to you. Dragons can be dragons or dictators and pigs could be anthropomorphic pigs or kids of local politicians ;-)

Pick a fairy tale and investigate the happenings: at the beginning as they unfold, in the middle or after the fact. Maybe the situation is nothing like was depicted in the fairy tale. Maybe Cinderella was the wicked one. Maybe Rapunzel was mad and locked away for everyone's safety. Maybe Snow White was a seductress who was kicked out of the castle but the royals want that kept hush hush.

The fairy tale list (and links to other lists) is at Fairy Tales, and a random picker at Tale of Two Tales.

---

When you're done, here are some examples of the fairy tale and detective story combinations:

The Fairy Tale Detectives (The Sisters Grimm series) -- Grades 4-6

Max Hamm, Fairy Tale Detective -- a Golden Book format, but for grades 8 and up

Jack Milton: Fairy Tale Detective -- an 18 min short film. (Some PG-13 content.)

Grimm Fairy Tales -- Not for kids and not a detective, but they are some dark turns on fairy tales

Once Upon a Crime -- Popular mystery writers re-imagine some fairy tales with some twisted results.

Bill Willingham's Fables series -- the legendary folk were forced out of their land and live disguised in New York city in a luxury apartment building. Then Snow White's party-girl sister, Rose Red, is murdered.

The Big Over Easy: A Nursery Crime is the first in the comedic Nursery Crime series by Jasper Fforde that's rife with word play.

A couple of list thats includes some detective fairy tales (some already mentioned): Graphic Novels and Fairy Tale Detectives.

Go forth and die

 

Go forth and die

What's a warm up?

A tale of two tales

Combine two fairy tales. (Yes, I'm on a fairy tale kick :-)

Stretch yourself and pick the first pair that you recognize. Or keep clicking until you feel a spark. (The generator uses these 30 Fairy tales which are mostly Western (and ones I am familiar with). There are more extensive lists of tales linked there also.)

First fairy tale
Second fairy tale

There's a good list of crossover fairy tales at the Sur La Lune board post Fairy tale crossovers? if you'd like to explore the genre.

The Rage

The Rage

What's a warm up?

"Plotting isn't like sex ..."

Hidden

The Judas kiss

The Judas kiss

What's a warm up?

Chairy tales

List 30 ways to use a chair. (You may use the pictured chair or one or several from your imagination.)

It can be the sweet, funny, unusual purposes a single chair has been used throughout its life. Perhaps a poem?

It can be a brainstorming session of unexpected uses for chairs (altering or destroying them as you wish.)

Or it can be part of one of the collaborative public arts projects where artists are given the exact same statue and painted, sculpted, added to them to come up with 100 unique designs.

Pittsburgh's DinoMite dinosaurs, New Mexico's Trail of Painted Ponies, other similar city arts projects around the world mentioned in Wikipedia's CowParade article.

Tale mail

(Click on the Picassa icon (lower right) to see larger versions.)

Write an email or series of emails from one fairy tale character to another after the big event of the story.
For example:

To: Cinderella
From: Your Stepsister
Date: After the Wedding

To: Mom
From: Your Little Pig

To: Little Red Riding Hood
From: Your Mother

To: The Seven Dwarfs
From: Snow White

To: Jack
From: The Giant

There's a list of familiar Fairy Tales and links to more extensive lists.

The photographs are from the Fallen Princesses series by Dina Goldstein. (It took a while for it to load for me.) A quote from Dina about the series from a JPEG Magazine article (no longer available) is preserved in the comments to this post.

(Idea from Storybook Memos.)

Star Feud

Pick two sets of your favorite characters (your own or other people's). Put them on Family Feud. Come up with the questions then come up with the answers those characters would give for that category.

Never seen Family Feud? There's an episode of Celebrity Family Feud on line so you can see the format. (There's a commercial, but that's what makes it free :-)

The goal on the show isn't to guess the right answer but to guess the most popular answers as given by audience poll. For this exercise questions about ordinary life might be the most amusing, like "What is the first thing you do in the morning?" "What's a child's favorite toy?" Your characters' ideas of what ordinary people do will be based on their own ideas of ordinary or their warped idea of what ordinary peons are like ;-)

This would lend itself well to a comic strip or book format (using images from the internet if you're leery of your drawing skills). You could use Power Point (or the Mac-equivalent Keynote) to create a click from panel to panel comic.

If you enjoy the comics format, there are several commercial and free products to help you create comics.

• Comic Life Deluxe: Comic Strip, Comic Book Creator (Mac) (which can create comics from images) looks really cool. Amazon has some other choices too.
• CNET has several freebies and free trials to download. (I've used CNET a lot over the years. They're safe and virus free.)
• Googling "make your own comics" brings up a lot of online options like Make Beliefs Comix that was mentioned here a while ago.

Blackest eyes

 

Blackest eyes

What's a warm up?

"Don't use words ..."

Soul survivor

 

Soul survivor

What's a warm up?

Purfectly resolved

What are your pet's 10 New Year's resolutions for you? What failings does your pet see in your abilities to meet his needs and how does he want you to change? Your worst failings (according to you) may be of no concern to your pet or may be pluses. What's fat but a softer, warmer lap?

It can be a present or past pet or an imaginary pet. However you do it, get into the pet's head and see the world through his eyes. As always, you needn't be you and the world need not be ours.

Angry chair

 

Angry chair

What's a warm up?

Curephobia

"The bad news for agoraphobics is that a cure is just around the corner." (Passed on by one of the readers of Word A Day.)

Agoraphobia means "fear of open spaces, leaving a safe place, or crowded public places" so an agoraphobic would certainly dread heading out for a cure, even around the corner.

Can you come up with more bad news in that same vein?

What about for other phobias, such as:

Claustrophobia -- fear of confined spaces.
Acrophobia -- fear of heights.
Mysophobia -- fear of being contaminated with dirt or germs.
Xenophobia -- fear of strangers or foreigners.
Necrophobia -- fear of death or dead things.
Brontophobia -- fear of thunder and lightening.
Carcinophobia -- fear of cancer.
Aviophobia -- fear of flying.
Arachnophobia -- fear of spiders.
Ophidiophobia -- fear of snakes.
Cynophobia -- fear of dogs.
Trypanophobia -- fear of injections.
Dentophobia -- fear of dentists.

Maybe you can come up with the bad news but need a phobia to fit it. Fredd Culbertson has collected a massive Phobia List.

Dirty window

 

Dirty window

What's a warm up?

"Exercise the writing muscle ..."

No one's leaving

 

No one's leaving

What's a warm up?

Little ghost

 

Little ghost

What's a warm up?

Help (desperately) wanted

With all the children in the world needing toys on Christmas, the job of Santa's elf is strained past the breaking point. The hours have expanded, there's no time to repair the workshop, there hasn't been a pay raise in years, and the only time off is Christmas Eve when Santa's away.

Create a help wanted ad for the position of Santa's elf. Job seekers will want to know about responsibilities, job requirements, hours, compensation, benefits. You need all your creative writing skills to make this sound enticing.

Excellent. But then one of Santa's disgruntled ex-elves hacks into the ad and inserts commentary ...

Black sheep of the family

 

Black sheep of the family

What's a warm up?

Bare bears

Choose one of the following homophone sets and write a microfiction (under 100 words). In this case your microfiction must include a setting, character or characters, conflict (a want blocked by an obstacle), and resolution. (If you want an additional challenge -- or to help limit the possibilities -- make it about winter or the holiday season.)

bare/bear
chord/cord
peak/peek/pique
rain/reign/rein
pore/pour
faze/phase
wet/whet
flair/flare
plain/plane

Stone cold

What's a warm up?

"Every word written ..."

On my way home

 

On my way home

What's a warm up?

Hell cat

 

Hell cat

What's a warm up?

'Tis better to give

It's better to give than receive. Really better since the gift that's been regifted for a dozen holiday seasons is cursed and if it's beneath your tree on Christmas morning you're destined for a year of petty annoyances. You can't throw it away or break it. To get the curse out of your house, you need to give it as a holiday present to someone else.

Space Lord

 

Space Lord

What's a warm up?

Night and day

"They shared a country of origin and a rented taxi, one driving it by night and one by day, but little else. Until one fateful day."

The taxi, of course, needn't be a yellow cab. It can be a Victorian hackney, a hover car that's seen prouder days, a water taxi, whatever you can come up with to suit your world.

The above blurb is for the article Night and Day in the NY Times that is a study in contrasts. If you want to read it after crafting your own story, be forewarned it's violent, but the good guy comes through fine! (Interestingly they are not from a country typically associated with violence.)

Sons of plunder

 

Sons of plunder

What's a warm up?

"It is my contention ..."

Baptism of fire

 

Baptism of fire

What's a warm up?

Death letter

 

Death letter

What's a warm up?

Jubilant jubilee

Create a new holiday or celebration that somehow involves the following:

• a broken knife
• a red cupcake
• covering the head
• a black horse
• a mirror
• sunset
• a pinch of salt

The words can be part of the back story or the celebration, e.g., a more common object may represent something intangible or unavailable in the present day. It may help to brainstorm each to let related ideas and connections flow out.

Skies on fire

 

Skies on fire

What's a warm up?

Rhopalic

In a rhopalic creation each successive word is longer by a letter or a syllable. It can be a sentence, a poem, a dialog, a headline ...

Dmitri Borgmann wrote a rhopalic sentence up to 20 letters: "I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting; nevertheless, extraordinary pharmaceutical intellectuality, counterbalancing indecipherability, transcendentalises intercommunications' incomprehensibleness."

If you'd like to try your hand at writing a rhopalic headline, Anu Garg of A Word a Day is running a contest that ends this Friday. The headlines submitted can be real or imaginary, can be increasing or decreasing word lengths.

Anu Garg has posted the best entries at his website: Rhopalic headline contest.

Alternatively, how far can you get on a rhopalic alliterative alphabet before going nuts? ;-)

The day that never comes

 

The day that never comes

What's a warm up?

"Half my life ..."

Just the smile

 

Just the smile

What's a warm up?

Passive manipulation

 

Passive manipulation

What's a warm up?

The mix-up

Write down the names of 10 of your characters.

Then answer the following questions.

1. 4 invites 3 and 8 to dinner at their house. What happens?
2. 9 tries to get 5 to go to a strip club. What happens?
3. 5 needs to stay somewhere other than home for the night. Do they chose 1 or 6?
4. 2 and 7 are making out. 10 walks in. What is their reaction?
5. 3 falls in love with 5. 8 is jealous. What happens?
6. 4 jumps you in a dark alleyway. Who comes to your rescue: 10, 2, or 7?
7. 1 decides to make dinner. Fifteen minutes later, what is happening?
8. 2 writes a book about his/her life. What is 5's review of it?
9. 7 kidnaps 2 and demands something from 5 for 2's release. What is it?
10. 3 has to marry either 8, 4, or 9. Who do they choose?
11. You get to meet either 1 or 6. Who do you chose?
12. 9 challenges 4 to a duel. Why?
13. Everyone is playing poker. Who's easiest to read? Most difficult? Who will lose first?
14. Everyone is invited to 2 and 10's wedding except for 8. How does 8 react?
15. Why is 6 afraid of 7?
16. 10 gathers everyone around to tell them a fairy tale. How does it go?
17. 1 arrives late for 2 and 10's wedding. What happens, and why were they late?
18. A love potion causes 6 and 9 to fall in love. What happens?
19. 3, 4, 6 and 8 all go to the zoo for 8’s birthday party. How does it go? What presents do they get 8?
20. Everyone's protesting something outside of your house. What are they protesting? What do you do?
21. 9 murders 1's best friend. What does 1 do to get back at 9?
22. 6 and 1 are in mortal danger. Only one of them can survive. Does 6 save him/herself or 1?
23. Which one of them is most likely to fail at life?
24. 5, 3 and 10 are trapped in a collapsed building. Who's the most helpful? Least? Who's likely to loose it first?
25. 3 starts a day camp. What happens?
26. 4, 6, and 7 are celebrating something. 8 walks in. What happens?
27. 1 starts to write a fan-fiction where 9 and 10 are going out. What is 2’s reaction?
28. 7 makes an apple pie. Is it any good?
29. What song or book would you choose to represent 1?
30. The quiz is over. What does everyone go to do now?

I don't know where these types of quizzes began but they pop up often on Deviant art. Though meme is used to describe any framework for people to use on their own characters, a search for "character meme" will turn up several. These questions mostly came from blackvixzin's Character Quiz :D on Deviantart.

Just to drive anal people crazy I changed some of the questions and altered a few numbers since I'm anal enough to want the characters distributed fairly evenly ;-)

6 gun quota

 

6 gun quota

What's a warm up?

In tune

Okay, something easy for those who are brain fried after Nano ;-)

Spell your character's or a favorite character's name in songs titles from your iTunes list.

Or come up with a relevant word for each letter (an acrostic) then search for those words in your list (or at the iTunes store for greater variety).

Don't have iTunes?

Try the lists of movies at NetFlix.

(Click on a genre or sub-genre. If genre, first click on See All [genre] beneath Search. Then for either click on the Sortable List button then Title to alphabetize.)

Or Anime or Manga at Anime News Network:

Amazon or your library would also give you a good size list if you're doing an acrostic.

Enter the storm

 

Enter the storm

What's a warm up?

A month of NaNo prompts

Last prompt before the end! Hope the light at the end of the tunnel is closer than you expected. (I have about 3000 words left to do.) Or that you at least had fun this month! :-)

I had a last minute NaNo inspiration that will help me. I tend to skip over description. So for each day of NaNo month I'll send out a prompt to focus your attention on something you might not ordinarily notice in whatever scene you're working on. The intent is not to generate great prose but to force you to expand your vision of what's going on around and inside your characters.

Write at least one paragraph for the day's prompt:

1. Describe your point of view (POV) character's current emotional state and how it affects him or her from head to toe.
2. Describe the shoes of the next character that walks into the scene and what they remind the POV character of.
3. Describe the weather (or environment if weather isn't relevant to your story) in the scene you're writing right now. Involve all 5 senses.
4. Relate something in your current scene to a toy from your POV character's childhood. Dig deep and make emotional connections to then and now.
5. The current situation to your POV character is [fill in an animal]. Extend the metaphor. What in the situation are the teeth? Why is something like the breath? How does it relate to the sound the character makes? (And whatever else you can come up with. Use all five senses!)
6. It starts raining (or stops raining). Describe the emotions *and* memories this evokes in your POV character.
7. In the next conversation, describe something the character is doing as they speak each line of dialogue.
8. Relate your POV character's best friend (current or childhood) to one of the characters they're with right now. Likenesses and differences. Relate both physical traits as well as attitude, temperament, life story ...
9. Describe your POV character's inner state in terms of one of the seasons, that is, the seasons that are relevant to your story.
10. A bug is in your current scene. Use the bug's actions as a mirror of what's going on with the situation or inside your POV character.
11. Pick one object in your current scene and describe it fully, using all five senses. (Yes, taste and smell can be a challenge sometimes!)
12. My daughter's favorite: Food descriptions! For the next meal your character has, describe, obviously, taste and sight and smell, but also texture, presentation, how the colors work together, emotional reactions, physical reactions, memories.
13. Something in the current scene transports your POV back to a place they frequently played (playground, tree house, junker car behind the shed, mom's closet ...) Pay particular attention to the resonance of the emotions between the two places.
14. In the next populous area your character visits, sum up their impression with one word. Rather than agonizing over the right word -- which wastes valuable NaNo time! -- use the first word that comes to mind. Then take that word and run with it as a metaphor or analogy. How does the word relate to the people, buildings, atmosphere, smell, colors, sounds ...
15. Relate the current situation the character is in to a game, like chess, dice, Monopoly, dominos, poker. Even if your setting isn't contemporary it's likely every culture will have games of chance involving dice-like objects (bones for instance) or strategy board game (like chess or go or parchisi).
16. Describe the next store your POV character visits. How are the proprietor or associate like the store? How do the appearances (dirtiness, cleanliness, order, chaos) relate? The voice and speech mannerisms?
17. Relate your POV character's current emotional state to a storm. It might be the anticipation of an approaching storm, the middle of the storm, or the relief or aftermath of a storm. Work the metaphor for all it's worth to gain you lots of NaNo points!
18. Another character is fiddling with an object -- jewelry, something in or from their pocket, something they picked up. Use the manipulations as a window in the character's fluctuating emotional state.
19. If the current situation continues, how does your POV character envision himself or herself and the important players in their life in the future? You can get detailed down to pets and number of children (like a drunken ramble). If they envision them all dead, what level of Hell is being readied and what special tortures await? (Then have another character bop them over the head to get them out of their funk ;-)
20. In the current scene, some skill your character is using she picked up somewhere from somebody during the course of her life. Reflect on that, particularly the emotional resonance the experience has for your character.
21. Rather than expand, synopsize. Someone new enters your story, or your character needs to relate what's been happening since the beginning of the story on a post card or Facebook update. Make each word count for dozens.
22. Your POV character hears a song and it evokes strong memories full of emotion and sensory detail.
23. Something repulsive happens to your POV character. Maggoty food? Slops dumped on them? Being sneezed on if they're germophobic? Describe it in all it's gory disgusting detail.
24. Have your POV character imagine what it's like to be another character. What it literally feels like to walk in their shoes and see the world through their eyes. Most interesting will be to explore someone whose values and preferences and personality are most different from your POV character's.
25. Your character's shoe (or body part or other abused, neglected piece of equipment for the shoeless) has been through hell the past few hundred pages. Let it vent. (It can be your POV character's dream so you can fit it into your Nano ;-)
26. Your POV character watches something break as though it were happening in slow motion. Use this as a metaphor and relate the sensory details to the worst thing that could happen to shatter the goal the character is working toward.
27. Is there lack of care for what kind of impact people are having on their world? For a moment some uncaring, thoughtless act of disregard for the world strikes a personal note for your POV character. Bring the details to life and, if you can, tie it into the greater goal the character is working toward. Let them rant <eg>.
28. Your POV character is drifting off to sleep, but The Big Problem still hasn't been solved and is pulling one way while the body is pulling the other way to get some much needed rest. Describe this mini-war as well as the character's feelings as they're torn between a need for action and a need for rest.
29. For a moment your POV character wishes they had some power that would fix the situation. Invisibility? Laser-beam eyes? Level 16 Charm? Let them fantasize and feel what it would be like.
30. Have your POV character describe their ideal world (or ideal time off for when this is all over) in all it's sensory glory as they seek the strength to keep going.

"There are no laws ..."

Of wolf and man

Of wolf and man

What's a warm up?

Great balls of fire

 

Great balls of fire

What's a warm up?

A scrumptious word feast

Come up with enticing and scrumptious ways of describing food you'll be eating. What if your descriptions were in competition with other family members' to win the coveted right to present the Thanksgiving day feast?

Or, if you're doing Nano, have the characters declare a one day truce and each describe the dish they'll bring to the Thanksgiving day feast.

Good eats!

Pick your favorite recipe. Your character has been planning to create this dish for quite some time as a special event or celebration. The dish can be grand but needn't be -- like the last ballpark hotdog with relish eaten with Dad, the "special" last maggoty meal the evil overlord served his prisoners -- but it's emotionally tied into the character or someone the character feels strongly toward and holds some special importance. Each ingredient has been carefully chosen or overseen from its beginning.

As you go through each ingredient, have your character talk about where it came from, why and what its importance is. Maybe they're far from home -- a ship? another planet? an alternate universe? -- and the ingredients aren't easy to come by.

Then describe what it's for. It could be something sweet :-) It could be twisted Wherever it leads you.

Sacred lie

 

Sacred lie

What's a warm up?

Give it a rest

Have one of your characters write a letter to the main opposition describing why they need to stop what they're doing.

It could be the main character to the one standing in their way, the bad guy to the good guy, a minor character who can see both sides and is torn between them.

If you're not doing NaNo use this on a story that didn't quite work for you, or for a story written by someone else.