Give me a starting line
Many writing books have writing exercises to do at the end of each chapter. They are supposed to free your creativity and help you write. For me they don’t. What they do to me is stress me out, lock up my brain, and put my creativity on ice. It’s like taking a test. I always hated taking tests.
I do better when I don’t have a structured writing lesson. Give me a good writing prompt or a starting line any time. It’s as though the bells have run, the gates have opened, and the horses have taken off around the track. My mind runs free.
I had a high school English teacher who discovered this in me. She began to give assignments with starting lines. My grades soared, not that my grades in English class were poor, they weren’t, but she knew I could do better.
Now my writing comes from my own starting lines, which are usually my working titles.
What works for you? Is it a structured exercise, a good prompt, or an unrestrictive starting line?
Posted on August 4, 2009, in My blog, My books, Writer, Writing and tagged Author, Beads, Bones, books, Books on writing, Bull Terriers, Care giving, Caregiver, Coffee, comedy, Craft of writing, Crafts, Dead, Disability, Doggoned, Family, Fiction, Home, Humor, Life, Love, MS, Multiple Sclerosis, Murder, Mysteries, Mystery, Novel writing, Writer, Writing. Bookmark the permalink. 12 Comments.
Doggonedmysteries 
I don’t do any writing exercises, although I think some are useful – for instance, scribbing words at random on a sheet of paper (Brainstorming. Generally, I just keep plodding through, listening carefully to the rhythm of the phrases. It’s an ardous process.
Ah the random scribbling of words…we had a speaker at our conference one year who used that. Darned if I can remember his term for it…Dave do you?
Just about anything can stimulate an idea.
A line of dialog, a description, a character’s reaction to something, a person seen in a store, and an overheard comment have all gotten me going at one time or another.
Once, it was a girl in a car passing me on the street. A book title, the opening lines, and a rough plot came to me in an instant.
But my favorite source and one of the richest I’ve ever found is a brain-storming chat with a trusted fellow writer. Whether they write in the same genre as you or in a different one, their take on your idea will be unique. They will see things outside what you have in mind, twists you never thought of, slants you never imagined. A simple question or remark can unleash a slew of ideas for scenes.
Which reminds, we’re due for a brainstorming session aren’t we? 😉
My kickstarter is something I hear or see. I’ve been noticing as I get older more frequently it’s something I misunderstood. Just yesterday my own computer screen scrambled what I was reading making it “mystery safaris”. That got my creative juices flowing. In fact it entranced me so that I never did finish reading whatever it was.
It has gone into my notebook with my other mind tickling ideas. If it tickles any of you, go for it!
I think you should run with Mystery Safaris, knowing you it’d be very a very interesting story to read.
Sorry, I can’t remember the random scribbling of words thing at all. This steel sieve mind of mine at work.
Yep, we are due for a brainstorming session.
And, boy, did Elena’s ‘mystery safaris’ stir a whole bunch of ideas, none of which I can remember now (10 seconds later). Steel sieve mind strikes again!
It could be that you weren’t at that session and attended another one.
I know what you mean about having a steel sieve of a mind…
I only write my blog, and don’t do any other forms of writing. But in terms of how I write my blog posts, the most random things can influence me. For instance, today on my way to work I saw a man cleaning the metal detail on the front of some offices, and the council man watering plants. Which reminded me of how much I liked my journey to work very early on a Saturday morning. And it went from there. The one time I did NaNoWriMo, it was based on my life, and how it would have changed had I come into lots of money, and then acted stupidly with it. No great imagination required there!
I’m still hoping to come into lots of money–my neighbor and I play the lottery together two days a week for the large sum of $1.50 each. However, I guarantee I wouldn’t act stupidly with it and I’m betting neither would you. 😉
I might be a little stupid, just for fun! I’d make sure I had a lovely home and plenty in the bank first though!
The first thing my neighbor and I want to do is hire a realtor and move to another neighborhood.