What did you say?

Little late this week as I'm battling a cold and trying to finish projects before NaNoWriMo starts .... today!

Come up with the basis of a scene where the following will make perfect sense. Try to come up with several scenes for each and then use your favorite as a writing prompt.

"Why are those flowers acting like turnips."

"I *thought* it was a *potato*."

"Is that a robot head?"

"Why does the sky turn into a potato chip sometimes?"

"I found my friends in my head ..."

"I found God in a paint bucket."

"The key to NaNoWriMo success is ..."

The root of all evil is eall yfel

Here are 3 online games based on word origins:

Etymologic
"The toughest word game on the web"
Guess the language and root word for a set of 10 words. (It took me a bit to notice the answer and scores displayed at the top of the page after you click submit.)

Daily BuzzWord
Click on Daily Buzzword. For more words click Archive.
You're given the definition and how it's used and then have to answer a question that might be about the origin, or a synonym or ...

FakeOut!
Guess the real definition from a list. There aren't many words (click on More Words to access the archive) and you have to click on Fake Out link at the bottom of the page to move to the next word, but the words are challenging. (I'm not sure what inspired the grade ranges on the words. I think most adults would find them challenging.)

Captain Underpants

Find your Professor Poopypants name at Professor Poopypants' Name Change-o-Rama 2000

Choose names for a hero, a sidekick, a villain, a villain's underling and perhaps another who prompts the story (is he or she good pretending to be bad, bad pretending to be good, one who wants to defeat the bad guy to take over the world for himself or herself?) Write an adventure for them.

Here's a sample of Professor Poopypants names:

Poopsie Barfbrain
Falafel Chucklebuns
Buttercup Diaperjuice
Fluffy Toiletsniffer
Stinky Gigglesquirt
Lumpy Bubblekisser

Seasoned manatee

Use each set of 4 words in a sentence.

• seasoned
  manatee
  expose
  doom
  
• seek
  self-mocking
  tittle
  artist
  
• tradition
  bless
  intended fear
  blind drive ahead
  
• wildflower wind
  gossamer
  quarrel
  arcana
  
• liar
  gluttony
  interstellar
  cannibal
  
• juniper
  gorgeous
  magnify
  canopy

"The average pencil is seven inches long"

National Novel Writing Month is almost here!

Next month is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)! It's a challenge started by Chris Baty to produce a 50,000 word novel in just 30 days, starting November 1 and ending midnight November 30.

Yes, it's insane and yes, it's a lot of fun :-)

My daughter, Kat (15), and I have done it for the past 2 years.

The great part about NaNoWriMo is that when the goal is to produce words rather than "good writing" then amazingly creative things flow out. Well, a lot of junk too! But when you turn off your inner editor, that little voice that says "No, that's no good, that won't work," you free yourself up to be more creative.

You can plan -- think up a basic story outline -- but no writing until Nov 1. (That's in 2 Wednesdays.)

I've done it with no plan 2 years in a row and it's worked out great. Even had a few hours to spare. ;-) Considering that the novel I've been picking at for the last 20 years hasn't gotten beyond (it's embarrassing to say ;-) 100,000 words of notes, actually finishing something and seeing the ideas flow without being planned was enlightening to say the least :-)

(When you're done you upload your work to the Nanowrimo word counter and it automatically counts your words. It's very generous about what it considers a word. No one reads it. It's just shear number of words.)

The first year we did it we set our goal at 1700 words per day (which would be 51,000) but some days the writing doesn't flow as well and some days get very busy (there's Thanksgiving and preparation in there!) so last year we set our daily goal as 2000 which gave us some generous padding.

Someone asked me last year how much time it takes and I was hesitant to say because for us it's a lot. But I read Chris Baty's book, No Plot, No Problem, and he said it takes 1.5 to 2 hours a day on average. Most people doing it also have jobs or go to school so that's all the time they can give it. So the answer to how much time will it take is that it will take us much time as you give it, basically! If you give it all day, it takes all day. If you only have 2 hours, it takes 2 hours.

Alien mail

Write a letter to a being living on another planet. At the moment the process is text only the way the internet used to be ;-) so you'll need to describe everything: what humans look like, cars, family structure, fast food, television, trees, houses ...

From: Writing Exercises.

Mouse potatoes

Below is sampling of new words being added to the Merriam Webster's dictionary during 2006. I must admit I only know about three quarters of them! (Which is better than my spell checker which is questioning 10 of them ;-) Use them as a writing prompt. Try to get as many into a story as 10-15 minutes allows. If you want to really push it, try incorporating one of the words into each sentence. (If you want the definitions they're linked at New Words.)

Technology and Computers

• mouse potato
  
• ringtone
  
• spyware

Science and Medicine

• avian influenza
  
• biodiesel
  
• gastric bypass

Pop Culture

• soul patch
  
• supersize

Entertainment and Leisure

• labelmate
  
• ollie
  
• wave pool

The Human Condition

• drama queen
  
• unibrow

International

• manga
  
• qigong

Business and Industry

• agritourism
  
• big-box

Nature

• aquascape
  
• coqui

Miscellaneous

• polyamory
  
• sandwich generation

Google image labeler

Google Image Labeler

Is it a game? I think so! At any rate it certainly challenges your ability to come up with words.

The object is to come up with keywords for a random image found by Google. You're playing with a partner (some random, anonymous person Google chooses for you). The object is for both of you to come up with the same word to describe an image. The trick is that you can't see the words your partner is coming up with.

You have 1.5 minutes to try to label as many images as you can but you can't move onto the next image until you've both found a word for the current image.

It can be quite addictive!

Thesaurus trails

Begin with a word and follow a trail of words through the thesaurus.

This is easiest with a thesaurus on your computer but it will work with an old fashioned hardcopy too. (There's an online Thesaurus a The Free Dictionary. Click the Word/Article radio button. The thesaurus words will be below the dictionary definitions.)

Start with any word: a word that has meaning for you, a new favorite, one chosen at random, one with a definition that might touch on a lot of things or something common place.

Write the word down then look it up in the thesaurus. Jot down one or more words that intrigue you. (It can be fun to deliberately choose a word that means something very different than the meaning you had in mind.) Then look up the new words. Keep going, looking up the words you've found until a trail comes to a dead end that offers no new words. You can then go back and choose one of the other words you chose from the thesaurus and follow that.

Keep following trails for 10-15 minutes or as long as you're having fun :-)

If you're only going to choose one or two words each time, you can write them down in a simple list. If you're going to choose several words each time you might want to make a cluster diagram by writing your original word in the center and then writing the words you chose from the thesaurus around it. (There's an example of a cluster diagram at Clustering characters.)

When you're done, look over the patterns and connections in the trails.

Pick one trail and use that as a writing prompt for 10-15 minutes.

(Inspired by Thesaurus Maze at About Teen Writing.)

Here's a few simple trails I created:

• animal -- crude -- earthy -- dusty -- cold -- passionless -- cold -- black -- swarthy -- dark
  
• beauty -- charmer -- necromancer -- prophet -- haruspex -- augur -- imply -- hint -- fantasy
  
• demon -- evil spirit -- bogey -- aircraft -- flyover -- overpass -- span -- straddle -- perspective -- futurism

Just wanted to let you know ...

In honor of my sister's visit, from the point of view of a bad guy's sister, write home to Mom about the bad sibling's activities. Assume Mom thinks he or she is a paragon so the goal is to break it to her gently. (It can be a bad guy someone else created or your own invention.)

"There's no excuse not to dream."

Seven virtues

This expands on the idea from last Saturday to help you get to know a character you've created better or flesh out one that seems a bit wishy-washy.

What would your character's list of 7 Virtues be? They don't have to be virtues he or she possesses, but ones he or she thinks are most admirable -- in others perhaps! While he goes off and does the total opposite ;-)

Then do a free write on a different one for 15 minutes each day about your character's thoughts and feelings on and experiences with the virtue. People he's known who've had it and the good and bad he's seen of it. Times he's seen it put into action. Just let the words flow nonstop for 15 minutes.

Try making up your own list of virtues first. Then, if you want, you can look through this list compiled from various places around the internet to see if there are any your character might move to the top of his or her list.

acceptance
acknowledgment
assertiveness
beauty
bravery
caring
charity
cheerfulness
clarity
cleanliness
commitment
compassion
competence
confidence
consideration
contentment
cooperation
courage
courtesy
craft
creativity
curiosity
detachment
determination
devotion
diligence
discernment
efficiency
empathy
energy
enthusiasm
excellence
fairness
faith
faithfulness
flexibility
forgiveness
fortitude
friendliness
generosity
gentleness
grace
gratitude
helpfulness
honesty
honor
hope
humility
humor
idealism
insight
integrity
joyfulness
justice
kindness
love
loyalty
mercy
mindfulness
moderation
modesty
obedience
open mindedness
order
orderliness
passion
patience
peace
peacefulness
perseverance
perspective
playfulness
prayerfulness
pride
principled
productivity
prudence
purity
purposefulness
rationality
reliability
resilience
respect
responsibility
reverence
righteousness
sacrifice
self confidence
self discipline
self possession
self restraint
service
silence
steadfastness
stillness
tact
temperance
thankfulness
thrift
tolerance
trust
trustworthiness
truthfulness
understanding
unity
wisdom
wonder

Lost in translation

Copy a paragraph of text from the internet, a poem, something you've written into the translator at Babel Fish Translation or Free Translation

Select a language to translate it into. (Only the European ones seem to work for Babel Fish. Or maybe it's just my browser.) Click Translate.

On the next page copy the translated text at the top and paste it into the box at the bottom. Choose another language to translate it into. (Note: Dutch is listed below English.)

Repeat for as long as you find this amusing :-)

Use the final output as a writing prompt.

Some hints:

• At times it leaves a foreign word untranslated and those will persist. If foreign words creeping in bothers you, translate it to English fairly regularly and replace them. (To see what the words used to be -- it probably has altered from the original -- you can click the back button despite the dire warning about resending the form. It works just fine.)
  
• Less frequently typos creep in -- ex, "if" became "if f" -- You may want to keep an eye out for those also if it bothers you.

Here's one that I did. If you want to see the original, click the Comments.

Maria had small paralyzed. To be excessively and the rag to float was the target eats of the snow. Everybody, where one became paralyzed to this Maria that must go away stops towards has been correct. As - it walk yet to teach to a day that is contradicts the norms to him. It provided for that the children and, laugh of the games to see paralyzed in the school.

The Devil and his publicist

Choose one of the following as a 10-15 minute writing prompt.

• Depict an allergy gone haywire.
  
• Pen the monologue of a nostalgic vampire.
  
• Script a dialogue between the Devil and his publicist.

From Michael Arnzen's THE GORELETTER. A bi-monthly email newsletter of the bizarre. Michael Arnzen is an author of horror novels and poetry.

Top Ten Tabloid Headlines for October 2006

From The City Newsstand's (a newsstand/bookstore in Chicago) monthly MAGBAG -- Top 10 Tabloid Headlines. (Mostly from Weekly World News (WWN) and the SUN.)

1. FATAL FARTS! — WWN
   
2. GRANNY SCARES OFF ROBBERS BY PULLING A BIGGER KNIFE! — SUN
   
3. SATAN CAPTURED BY GIs IN IRAQ! — WWN
   
4. VAMPIRES ATTACK U.S. TROOPS Army of undead taking over mountains of Afghanistan! — WWN
   
5. VEGAN VAMPIRE ATTACKS TREES — WWN
   
6. Sherriff serves up a bowl of his own blood as bait to capture... VAMPIRE CAT! — WWN
   
7. Mystery of the floating coffin — SUN
   
8. SCIENTISTS END TERROR OF THE WALKING MUMMY! — SUN
   
9. AMERICA'S LATEST ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS — VAMPIRES — SUN
   
10. JUDGE WHO BARRED WITCHES FROM ADOPTING CHILDREN TURNED INTO GUINEA PIG! — WWN