Can't
think of what to write about? Before you reach for that bottle of absinthe, check
out these tips.These are suggestions to break writer's block and to give your
journal assignments shape. If you are having trouble writing in your journal,
try one or two of these per entry. If you come up with a new one, e-mail it to
me or put it in the discussion and we will give it a try too. 0. Keep a journal.
0.1 Read. Read a lot. Read the kind of writers you would like to become. Read the kind of publications they get or got published in.
1. Open the dictionary at random. Put your finger down at random. Look this word up in different dictionaries, writing down the definitions. Find a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary at your library and find the history of the usage of this word. Now freewrite starting with this word. Create new definitions and new words.
2. Go out for Chinese food. Order tea, enjoy the food. When you are given the fortune cookie, save the fortune. Imagine a character with this fortune who becomes angry when reading it, why is he or she so angry? What coincidence did the fortune play on? What action will he or she take when the realization of this anger becomes apparent to them?
3. Randomly take a story from the front section of your newspaper. Now randomly choose a story from the second section of the newspaper. Combine the stories so that both events revolve around one person.
4. Take a short story from a famous author of a previous century; change the names, update all of the problems, rewrite the ending to so it ends how you think it should have ended in the first place.
5. Overthrow the tyranny of the mundane.
6. Write a very short story about someone who needs to write a short-story but can't. What obstacles are confronting the author? What will the author do about them?
7. Open a drawer at random in your desk or in your house. List the contents of the drawer in detail. Write sentences that combine the items. Where are the items from? How long have they been in the drawer? How often is each item used.
8. Save junk mail for one week. Create your own junk mail collage or write your own ad copy by taking a sentence from each piece.
9. Choose a novel, any novel that you like, and get to know it, literally, backwards and forewards. Break it up into its components. Change the characters around. Find holes in the plot and fill them.
10. Find a short-story that you like. Rewrite it from a different charachter's perspective. Create a new character and put him or her in the story.
11. Think about the most humiliating thing that happened to you in your teen years, now write about it in the third person.
12. Leave messages for yourself on your own answering machine, let the messages be notes to yourself on how you are feeling that day and what problems you are facing. Transcribe these tapes when you get home.
13. Try to remember someone who disliked you in the past. Write about an incident between the two of you from their perspective.
14. Describe a character in your story getting dressed. Describe everything they do in their morning ritual. What do they put in their pockets? What is in their wallet or purse?
15. Set an alarm or timer for 5 minutes and freewrite as fast as you can try to fill as many pages as you can with whatever comes to mind.
16. Describe a moment in as much detail as you can. It can be a description of a moment you remember, this very moment, or the moment that just went by. Describe it in terms of what you see, feel, hear, and smell.
17. Describe your fondest memory of childhood, the best day. Include every detail you can possibly remember about it; what were you wearing, who were you with, etc.
18. Find two sets of instructions with illustrations (magic tricks, fileting fish, how to assemble a chair, etc.) use the text from one with the illustrations from the other.
19. Take a short story you have written in the present tense and put everything in the past tense or vice-versa.
20. Follow an insect as far as you can.
21. On a breezy day, go to a toy store and buy a kite. Ask for a spool of kite string because, if you recall, they never give you enough. Go to a park, football field, or beach and (following the instructions) assemble the kite and fly it. Write about this experience. Describe what you do for a living or your relationship with your partner in the same piece.
22. Think of one word that describes how you feel. Now look that word up in the thesaurus.
23. Write encyclopedia entries for characters in your story. Read encyclopedia entries for objects in your story. Rewrite them and insert them.
24. Make a list of all the things you can't remember.
25. Write on pages with no lines with your eyes closed.
26. Write a story using nothing but dialog.
27. Write a story that uses only e-mail messages.
28. Write a story that only uses one-sided phone calls.
29. Tear out a page of a magazine. Tear this page in half. Take all the readable words along the tear and list them. Utilize each word in a sentence in exactly the same order that they were found.
30. Write about a dream that you had as if it happened in "real life" just yesterday.
31. Write a dream that one of your characters' had. Include this in the story.
32. Write a character's journal entry.
33. Write a letter to one of your characters. Have one of your character's write a letter back.
34. Take a stand on an issue. Write about a character who disagrees with you and won't change their mind no matter what you say. Why is he or she like that?
35. If you do not have a favorite painting, go to a museum and find one. Write a prose description of your favorite painting.
36. Write a prose description of your favorite song, elaborating on all of the details that the song writer could not provide due to the limitations of the song writing structure and format.
37. Read a poem. Write what you think led to the writing of the poem.
38. Go to a rummage sale or a thrift store and buy a piece of costume jewelry. Take it home. Write the history of the jewelry from its manufacture to your purchase.
39. Where do you never go? Rollerskating? Indian bingo? Bowling? Tour of a factory? Go, and write about it.
40. Read a genre novel that you never have read before. If you have never read a romance novel, read one. (Or a mystery, science fiction, etc.). Now, write about a character who reads that genre.
41. Write a short story that takes place in a single room.
42. Who is your least favorite author? What kind of stories do they write? What would you do differently? Can you do it? Repair their work.
43. Find a myth that you like. Rewrite it as a modern story in such a way that it tells someone why it is a favorite myth.
44. Take your longest short story and rewrite it to half its current page count. Then rewrite it to one page while still maintaining the essential details.
45. Write about something you have never told anyone before focusing on why you never told anyone.
46. Stay up all night writing with no coffee, later, stay up all night writing while drinking coffee. Combine the two efforts.
47. Write a story about an important decision that you had to make. What where the consequences of making another choice?
48. Write a paragraph that desribes the contents of a room in such a way as to tell you the age, occupation, gender, etc. of the room's owner.
49. Write a list of ten favorite short stories. What were the most memorable components of each one? Make a chart.
50. Write a short story about an everyday activity. What happens when you shop?
51. Today is the birthday for one of your characters. Now read their horoscope. Given their circumstances, how are they celebrating their birthday today?
52. Read other lists of writing experiments.
53. Do an internet search (or look in your library catalog) for "fluxus," "dada," and "surrealism."
54. Listen to a piece of music that you have never listened to in music that you do not usually listen to. Write about this experience. One of your character's listens to this music.
55. One of your character's needs something but only has enough money to send a 20 word telegram (or only enough time to write a 20 word note, e-mail message, phone message, etc.). Use your superior writing skills to help him or her write the most effective and persuasive message.
56. Time is another color in your palatte. What is your character remembering about his or her childhood while waiting for the coffee to be served?
57. Do a tarot reading or I ching reading on your character's question, "what do I need to know?"
58. Write a detailed description of the early morning sky, then the afternoon, sunset, and night.
59. Go to a cafe, resturant, donut shop or where ever you go, write a quick sketch of someone in as much detail as you can.
60. Write snatches of overheard conversations between people you do not know.
61. Ride the bus for an hour. Bring your journal.
62. While in a public place, write only what you hear for ten minutes. Do not look up from the page.
63. Describe the school history of your characters. What did they do well in?
64. Read the creation story from a religion you are not familiar with. Compare it with your own beliefs. What could change from having a different creation story? Could it change how you relate to others and your world?
65. Think about one of your characters, their age, class, sex, etc. Now go and read a magazine that they would read. What are their concerns according to the advertisers? According to the editors?
66. Write the confessional scene where the secret is finally revealed.
67. Go for a walk in your neighborhood. Write down every blue thing.
68. Write the first thing that comes into your mind, now the second. Repeat as necessary.
69. Freewrite while listening to different kinds of music. Keep a note in your journal of what you were listening to while you were writing.
70. Go to any exhibition of art and take notes on the exhibit - this can be a university art gallery, a public museum, a gallery, or anywhere art is presented to the public. What are people saying in their media and how would you say it with words?
71. Xerox ten pages from a children's mystery and ten pages from an adult horror novel and combine the two at random.
72. Write a short story based on a newspaper article and then go to the library and find a similar article on the same topic from 30 years ago. How have the perspectives changed? Include a character with that perspective.
73. Make photographs. Learn about light and how it works through photography.
74. Go to the grave yard and find the oldest graves in the cemetary, read the epitaphs. How old were they when they died? Any ideas given about common causes of death?
75. What was the greatest day of your life?
76. Who is the most beautiful person that you know?
77. Describe the longest trip you ever took.
78. What is the strangest thing that ever happened to you, or that you thought happened?
79. Paint a still life with words.
80. Experiment with Haibun, a Japanese form that uses a descriptive paragraph with a haiku summary at the end.
81. Choose ten favorite short stories and write their first lines on one page. On the opposite page write yours.
82. When in doubt, "there was a knock at the door."
83. Write precise instructions for something non-technical and abstract like falling in love.
84. Volunteer to work in the soup kitchen.
85. Who is the person that ever made you the angriest? Did they have any relation to the person in #76?
86. Draw a picture. Illustrate a previously written story.
87. Go to a church (Catholic Church most likely to be open) in the middle of the week, walk once around the church slowly. If there is anyone there try to imagine why.
88. Find an illustration from a hundred year old magazine or book. Write a new story around the illustration.
89. Paint a landscape with words. Describe the scene in such a way that the reader will find the emotional connection with the scene that you or your character does.
90. Invent a slang term and feature it in a very short story.
91. Take a section of dialog from one of your stories and write the physical actions the characters are doing while they are talking.
92. If you were in doubt and there was a knock at the door - don't answer it. What are the consequences?
93. Go eat at a resturant like the one your character ate at last.
94. "A story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end but not necessarily in that order." -Goddard.
95. Research the writing habits of other writers.
96. Take a poem and expand it into prose that is just as concise as the poem.
97. Write the geneology of your characters.
98. Describe an object in your room in 250 words.
99. Take three unrelated photographs and write a story that joins them together.
