Jumpstarts and Story Starters

[Alessia Brio]

Another of the presenters at the La Jolla Writers' Conference was Sara Lewis. I attended two of her sessions. She provided one exercise to jumpstart your writing that I found interesting, and I can see myself using it for stalled works in addition to launching new stories.

It's kind of a "trick your muse into cooperating" approach. The rules are thus:

a. You must write longhand. (No typing.)
b. You must write continuously for 20 minutes. (No stopping to "think.")
c. You must write script-style as if you are interviewing a character.

Author: Who are you?
Character: My name is ____.
.
.
.​

We did this as an in-class exercise, and at the end of 20 minutes I had 6 hand-written pages of character development for a pre-teen girl who'd been abandoned by her mother & was now living in a broken down VW van with her older sister whose pimp beat her. Surprised the fuck out of me. I had no idea that little girl was milling around in my subconscious waiting to be written. (Okay, yes, she's STILL waiting ... but I've got her on paper now. I won't forget her.)

One thing I noticed as each of the attendees read their dialogues aloud was that there was a distinct point where the character kind of "took over." The author's questions became fewer & further between ... and the character emerged. Way cool.

 

[TxRad]

Very interesting approach.....

Me on the other hand, I just listen to the voices in my head, they make introductions very well....

I'm joking but serious... I do basically the same thing as you did only as a mental conversation. The good ones go on the tape recorder. It keeps me busy on long drives....

 

[cloudy]

I'll have to remember that one, thanks.

I've found that if I'm just staring at a blank Word document and the words just absolutely won't transfer from my brain down through my fingertips to the keyboard, if I write longhand (as you said), my block will often dissolve fairly quickly. I've used that particular trick numerous times.

I'll have to remember the character interview, though. It seems like it would be more useful to me than the character sheets.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Remember the days when we ALL wrote longhand?

I used to write in bed, in a spiral notebook. I would fill all of the right-hand pages, and make revisions in the margins. When i reached the end of the book I would turn it upside down and continue on the new right-hand pages...

I remember my first word processor. What a miracle, to be able to move paragraphs, save versions, see my words in authoritative black type on a white screen!

I've recently gotten a spiral notebook again...

 

[MagicaPractica]

I started kind of doing that mentally with this character, "Who are you?" etc.

 

[Alessia Brio]

Remember the days when we ALL wrote longhand?

Nope. I never did. But, I didn't write fiction/poetry at all until 2003.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Remember the days when we ALL wrote longhand?

I used to write in bed, in a spiral notebook. I would fill all of the right-hand pages, and make revisions in the margins. When i reached the end of the book I would turn it upside down and continue on the new right-hand pages...

I remember my first word processor. What a miracle, to be able to move paragraphs, save versions, see my words in authoritative black type on a white screen!

I've recently gotten a spiral notebook again...

Yep. My first typewriter was the kind with the metal keys and the double ribbon (red and black)... it wasn't electric. The next one was electric, and I used those little white sheets to fix the typos... wrote my first real novel on that one...!

I didn't have a computer until I was in college....

 

[Boxlicker101]

Personally, I get inspired by photos or videotapes or suggestions from readers. Of course, most of my stories have little or no plot and much of the dialogue is on the order of "Uh! Uh! Uh!" she whimpered, as I rammed my cock in and out of her dripping pussy." Not all of it, of course. There is sometimes some conversation before the sex starts, but I keep it to a minimum.

 

[neonlyte]

I'll have to remember that one, thanks.

I've found that if I'm just staring at a blank Word document and the words just absolutely won't transfer from my brain down through my fingertips to the keyboard, if I write longhand (as you said), my block will often dissolve fairly quickly. I've used that particular trick numerous times.

I'll have to remember the character interview, though. It seems like it would be more useful to me than the character sheets.

My typing is slow enough to mimic writing longhand, I tend to pace the room doing the mental build for characters, the individuality, language, dress, behaviour, invariably only emerge in the typing, the mental build is their relationship to existing characters. They still tend to tell me where they want the story to go. And that's fine, I'll follow with a backspace key.

 

[TxRad]

Personally, I get inspired by photos or videotapes or suggestions from readers. Of course, most of my stories have little or no plot and much of the dialogue is on the order of "Uh! Uh! Uh!" she whimpered, as I rammed my cock in and out of her dripping pussy." Not all of it, of course. There is sometimes some conversation before the sex starts, but I keep it to a minimum.

Are you reading over my shoulder again.........

Pictures make stories..... A lot of my work comes from a picture that catches my eye and I have to figure out what about it makes it so interesting..... The story just comes naturally along for the ride....

 

[rgraham666]

The writing for twenty minutes I could handle.

But my long hand is poor, slow and almost impossible to read. It's more likely to make me more frustrated than break me out of a loop.

I never wrote longhand, or typed for that matter. I'd never be able to do anything even close to publishable. A word processor is a godsend to me.

 

[Guest]

I agree w/ Alessia and TxRad. I like writing long hand. I tend to get the story out faster that way. I listen to the characters in my head too. They have the conversation and I write it down. When I'm in Microsoft Word, I don't type as fast as I write and I backspace and make corrections which slows me down.

Pictures do help, but when I listen to a certain song, that inspires me even more. I imagine a place where the characters might me listening to the song, what kind of music would they listen to while they are dancing, making love, etc. Like a soundtrack.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I started kind of doing that mentally with this character, "Who are you?" etc.

I did this with my character Tracy; I wrote his journal, in which he talked about the events I had just dragged him through. It was amazing, I had no idea the guy was so twisted!

And writing out his family chart brought up some other surprises, as well. There are some skeletons in the boy's closets, that I hadn't realised...

 

[ABSTRUSE]

Cool.

I always start out in long hand and then move to the computer. For me each story must start its life written by hand.
The task is to decipher my heiroglyphics. I have my own shorthand.