Vitora’s Great, Long, and All-Powerful Alphabetical List of Writing Activities for Authors Great and Small

By Vitora

 

 

Never mind the grand title.  It’s just for show.  Trust me, the piece is not as special as the verbose heading would suggest.

 

All right, here we go.  Blah blah blah, this article will show you lots of ways to—what the heck; let’s get down to the point.  I’ve compiled a rather extensive—but in no way exhaustive—list of ways to come up with story ideas and to get you into the writing mood.  Some will involve lots of ‘user interaction’, others require a minimal amount of thinking, but all should get your creative juices flowing.  Ready?

 

A is for acting out your characters.  It’s quite self-explanatory, actually—all you need are a pencil, paper, music, and an empty room and you’re ready to play the part of your hero or heroine (or perhaps your villain!).  Props, such as select pieces of jewelry or the odd weapon, are nice too, but they’re not essential; besides, you shouldn’t know ahead of time what you’re going to do…if you do, you shouldn’t need to do this.  At any rate, start up your instrumental music and close your eyes.  Remember, you are your character.  Take a few deep breaths, maybe hum along with the music if you know the song—and begin.

 

From here you have a couple of ways to go: you can either act out a ‘typical’ day in your character’s life or you can act out the next scene they’re involved in.  If you decide the former, then do what seems natural.  What does your character eat for breakfast?  How about their work situation or their love life?  Don’t throw anything special if you can help it (unless, of course, your inner muse is driving you to do so); this is an average day.  If, on the other hand, you go for the latter, then you’re rather on your own—I can’t predict all situations that your individual may have gotten themselves into.  But the really important thing about this exercise is to really throw yourself into your character.  Brush back your hair every few seconds if this is their nervous habit; munch on an imaginary plate of pickled herring and Saltine crackers if that’s their favorite snack.  Depending on which route you took, this technique will either delve you deeper into your character’s true self or work out the next difficult scene in their life story.

 

B is for biographies.  How did Jack get to the point where he was willing to trade in the cow and climb the beanstalk?  What traumatic experience led Cinderella’s evil stepmother to be who she is?  I’m not saying that you should write these stories—apply the principle to your own characters.  Perhaps, in your novel-in-progress, you hint at some dastardly deed in the hero’s past.  Your audience, of course, will want to know what that shameful sin is; it’s a nice little hook to drag those reluctant readers into the tale.  Sometimes, of course, you won’t want to reveal your star’s secret—you wish his deepest secrets to stay hidden in the shadows.  But other times, you may feel it’s for the best, and that’s where biographies come in.  Don’t think that you should drive down to the library, grab the thickest, most boring biography off the shelves, and copy it almost word for word; no, I’m saying write the story.  Dialogue, description, action, characterization—this should all be in your character’s fictional life story, which will be your story’s prequel.  Make it silly, make it serious, make it spooky, but please, please don’t make it boring.  This is fiction, remember, not a school textbook.

 

C is for continued adventures.  Now we dive into the exciting realm of fan-fiction: taking the world and characters of someone else and throwing new dangers their way.  This opens up a vast amount of possibilities—hey, who wouldn’t like to see Han Solo or Matthias get out of yet another close scrape?  And there’s always the added bonus of being able to create your own characters that follow the same rules as the established ones.  Though it can’t be published, fan-fiction is an excellent way to get story ideas.  I find it easier to write in someone else’s world than in my own, but I find it even easier to translate the characters into my personal universe once the story is written.

 

D is for dreams.  Ever wake up and discover that you just wrote an entire novel in your sleep last night?  No, it won’t be waiting for you on the computer or in your desk drawer—it’s still in your head.  And it’s probably more than a little bit jumbled and silly, too, knowing dreams.  But it’s there, and it’s excellent inspiration.  Even if you don’t write a bestseller out of your nighttime vision, you may come up with a humorous, scary, or even intriguing short story that you write for your own pleasure.

 

E is for exchange beginnings with friends.  Write a few random sentences on a piece of paper (or a document, if you both have computers handy) and give it to your friend; they’ll do the same.  Before you swap sheets, go ahead and set a timer.  Yep, a timer, and choose a small increment of time—three to five minutes.  This way, your muse won’t know what hit it, seeing as it doesn’t know what your friend’s beginning is, and it won’t have time to recover and may end up spitting out some pretty juicy material.  Without the surprise and time limit, your brain has time to wander and think logically about what should come next; not a good thing, if you’re looking for random inspiration.

 

F is for freewrite.  This one is easy, and often quite humorous, if you talk to yourself on paper like I do.  Get out your paper and pencil again and set your timer (don’t start it yet, though) for ten minutes.  Here’s where you make a decision: true freewrite or directed freewrite?  If you decide on the first, then just start writing.  Write whatever the heck comes to mind and don’t you dare change a single word.  During the time your timer is going, don’t lift your pencil from the paper; if you get stuck and can’t think of something, just write the same word over and over, or glance around the room and pick a random object to write about.  When the time is up, look back over your piece.  True freewriting serves two purposes: one, getting your creative juices flowing; two, digging up that raw material.  You may not like a single word of what you wrote—in that case, only the former was accomplished.  But sometimes, you’ll see a glimmer of an idea that just might be developed into an interesting story.

 

Then again, you may like the sound of directed freewrite better.  In that case, choose a topic.  It can be anything, from why strawberries are red to grief to annoying siblings to the Internet.  Anything.  Anything.  Write your chosen topic at the top of your paper, start your timer, and begin writing.  Sounds familiar, right?  Wrong; this time, start by thinking about your topic.  Why are strawberries red?  You’ll most likely come up with some pretty interesting explanations, and perhaps some rambling material too—that’s okay.  Just let your mind wander, and don’t try to force it back on track.  You’ll miss out on some great stuff if you do.

 

G is for generate topic lists.  Pick a list topic—any topic.  Again, this can be anything you come up with: Talking Fruit, Random Stuff, People, TV Shows…etc.  Write it on the top of a piece of paper and plop yourself down in your favorite chair.  Decided that you’re going for Random Stuff?  Good choice; it’s a popular topic.  Now look around you and start scribbling down random things you see.  I don’t necessarily mean items like ‘fireplace’, ‘lamp’, and ‘desk’.  Try things such as ‘man walking dog’, ‘papers scattered on floor’, ‘mice nibbling at ancient pizza’.  Action things, things that suggest movement or mystery, are going to end up as story ideas.  Really, who wants to read (or write, for that matter) a story about Harold the lamp shade?  Not me, for crying out loud.  I’d rather read something about why those mice were out, unafraid of the inhabitants of the house—not to mention the pizza.  Now that you’ve got a list, you can go back over it and put a star by the things that spark interest in your muse’s elusive little heart.  Save this list and refer back to it when you’re out of other story ideas.

 

H is for hectic writing.  This is a lot like freewriting, only it’s on already-established pieces of work, preferably one that you had writer’s block with.  Perhaps you have a story that you haven’t touched in months—perfect.  It’s ripe for the picking.  Open it on your computer or take it out of the drawer and read over it.  Don’t change anything, though, unless there’s truly a glaring grammatical error or some such problem.  Get to the end and get ready to write—don’t forget to set your timer, though!  You can’t really think about what you’re writing, though, or you’ll get stuck again; thinking is the quickest way to become trapped in the mire of writer’s block.  Just write for five to ten minutes, and then read back over your work.  Like it?  Save it.  Hate it?  Delete it.  But at least you’re going somewhere with it, right?  And eventually you’ll hit on something perfect and take off like a shot.  Just remember, no thinking.  And the timer is essential to this one—otherwise you have the time to think.

 

I is for imaginary journey.  Find yourself a nice, meditative spot—near running water or somewhere dark and quiet—to sit, grab some paper, and close your eyes.  Now, slowly, detail by detail, draw a world.  Is it hot or cold?  What sorts of plants exist in this place?  How about creatures?  Once you’ve constructed an entire land, explore.  Find out what ancient civilizations left their mark, what legendary monsters have their lairs in the high mountains, why the natives refuse to go anywhere near that smoking mountaintop (hmmm…maybe it’s—duh!—a volcano?).  When you’re done discovering all these juicy details, go ahead and open your eyes.  Write down your finds.  Perhaps something will emerge that makes your brain click into gear and start writing.

 

J is for journal.  You may already have one of these—many people do—but if you don’t, you can use anything from a ten-cent notebook from Target to the electronic voice-activated lock toys (I don’t think those work too well…I’ve never tried one myself, though).  I use a program I created on my computer, which you can download at my website (see link at the end); it’s a bit primitive, but I use it because I type faster than I write by hand.  Speed is important—choose what you’re fastest at.  Believe you me, if you stop and think about what you write in your journal, it’ll come out sounding like an essay (see a pattern in these exercises?  No thinking!).  Not good—not for what we’re looking for, anyhoo.  Your journal is just for jotting—or sketching, if you’re an artist—down what you think about life, or a random story idea you had, or a list of your secret crushes.  Whatever, really; again, it’s good for getting ideas flowing.  There are other types of journals you can keep other than a personal one, too, such as the dream journal—in which you write your dreams when you wake up; this is handy for dream writing—or the ‘commonplace’ book, a notebook that you write your favorite quotes and book passages.

 

K is for keepsakes.  Grandmothers and other elderly people are quite notorious for keeping odd mementos from ‘the good ol’ days’, and quite often they have stories to tell about these items.  “My brother’s wife’s sister’s son’s pet mouse’s boyfriend’s owner’s brother got this medal when he saved the family dog from a—  You get the point.  At any rate, you can decide between two options here: ask the owner of the keepsake to tell the real story behind it, or make up its story.  Those old coins sure look like they were underwater for the longest time…pirates, perhaps?  How about that once-beautiful, moth-eaten dress…who originally wore that?  Hold the object, touch it to your cheek, turn it over in your hands—and listen to its voice.  Let it tell its story.

 

L is for leading in with action.  Make a list of basic action words—run, jump, fly, walk, swim, etc.  Using a thesaurus (or perhaps your head), find better, more descriptive versions of these, such as: scamper, bound, soar, amble, and flounder.

 

If you’re a serious writer, you most likely have a large file of unused characters; go ahead and choose one, or make one up if you don’t have any spare individuals lying around.  Now choose one of the words; for this example, I’m going to use my mouse character Regreb and the word bound.  Regreb bounded over the fence, his chest heaving as he pressed on determinedly.  Using the character’s name and the verb, write a single sentence like the one above.  This should give you reason to finish it—why is Regreb running?  There’s got to be a reason, and that’s where the rest of the story comes in.

 

M is for magazine pictures.  National Geographic is one of the best for this exercise, as it’s got everything from jungle animals to African tribes to the lifestyle in modern-day Rome.  Something I like (although I don’t believe in evolution) is the evolutionary charts, because their artist comes up with some excellent creatures that, with a few tweaks, are quite neat for fantasy—my specialty genre.  Newspapers and websites are also useful, but I’ve found magazines, especially ones like National Geographic, to be the best.

 

Find and cut out a few pictures that interest you.  Maybe you like the lions creeping through the grass, or the busy streets of Mexico City.  Choose one and begin writing whatever comes to mind when you look at the picture—this could be a complete story, or just random thoughts that you jot down and later run together into something comprehensive.  This is similar to drawing on real-life experience, except that you really have no limits—that is, unless you read the caption first; you may not want to see what the picture really is depicting, especially if when you first see it your muse starts going nuts.

 

N is for Nouns.  This is a little game I made up, and it may take some explaining.  I did borrow some of the ideas from the book Writing the Wave, but in general it’s my activity.  Take out a sheet of paper and draw several boxes, anywhere between one and five.  In each box, write the first noun that comes to mind; I ended up with computer, clock, brother, rat, and Richie Frahm (don’t ask, okay?  Just…don’t) in my five boxes.  Don’t write down this next step.  Think of a verb that each item would be most likely to do.  In my example, this step would be: process, tick, annoy, eat, and sit on the bench.  Now, in the respective boxes, write the opposite of these verbs (or if they don’t have an opposite, then write something that they certainly wouldn’t do)—shut down, hum, behave, sing, play basketball.  OK, so…what if computers just shut down, all on their own?  Across the world, people would panic, lose their unsaved information, and even be unable to work.  All right, how about clocks—if clocks started humming all of a sudden instead of ticking, what might be the cause?  Or what if one day your younger brother turned into a veritable angel?  I assume you’d be suspicious.  See where this is going?  It’s a game of what-ifs—and what-ifs are why storytelling even exists—to get you thinking and writing.

 

O is for objects around you.  Thanks to members of Tsarmina’s Redwall Fan-Fiction board for this one…  If you run out of ideas one day, glance around the room, or even take a quick walk.  What everyday objects do you see?  Perhaps the door—uh, duh, how boring.  But not if it automatically closed behind you, or slammed itself in the faces of people who drove you nuts.  What about that pile of dirty laundry?  How about writing a story from the point of view of the laundry monster for starts, or maybe even the sad tale of little Joey, who forgot to sort his laundry and was sucked in by a group of aliens who live in sweaty socks?  OK, so that was over the top—but such ordinary things can become great stories, even if they’re only good for children’s picture books.

 

P is for portraits of time.  Ever see a magnificent sunset and run to snatch up your camera?  It’s one of those Kodak moments, those times when a spectacular sight gives your heart and soul a nice dose of ‘nature’s glory’.  A camera isn’t the only way to capture a scene, though—as a writer, you have the power of words as well.  Next time you see something that interests you—a waterfall, two people holding a strange conversation, or your cousin’s horrendously messy bedroom—grab up a pen and paper and record it with specific adjectives and strong verbs.  Keep a file of your captured moments, and when you come to a road block in one of your stories, whip out your papers and work one in.  This adds realistic flavor to your writing if you’ve accurately described the scene, and also gives you a whole new pre-assembled point to work from.

 

Q is for Quick Work, another game of mine.  At the end of this article, you’ll find a list of prompts—but don’t look at it yet!  I’ve spaced them out as much as possible so it’s easier for you to only see one at a time.  Covering up the unused ones with a separate piece of paper, read the top word.  Quickly, now, what does it make you think of?  On yet another page, jot down the first word that comes to your mind.  Keep going with the same idea, creating a chain of words that are all connected somehow (at least in your mind—to the casual observer, milk might not be obviously related to horseradishes).  Using the same principle as Writing the Wave’s ‘writer’s gold’, this may awaken fresh ideas from the dark depths of your mind.

 

R is for rewriting.  Pull out a couple of finished pieces that you aren’t really satisfied with, or write up something at random that you absolutely hate.  What’s wrong here—the beginning, the middle, or the end?  For each section that you deem disgusting, copy it down three times on separate paper.  Set a timer for ten minutes and start changing things in your first copy: to begin with, take out and insert entire sentences, or even paragraphs; get the plot right before you tweak the little things.  Now mess around with the details—character descriptions, verbs, and dialogue.  When the time’s up, put it aside and don’t you dare look at it again—if you do, you mess things up.  Grab your second copy and do the same thing, but go in a completely different direction: if Millie killed Max in your original and threw Sammy off a cliff in your first version, then have her kiss Marty instead.  Do the same with a third revision; change something major around, and don’t forget to use the ten-minute limit on both of those.  Now look at your four pieces, the original and the three copies.  What elements do you like best of each one?  Take what you like and combine them to result in a story with the exact components that you want.

 

S is for songs.  Music is an excellent way to get you into a writing mood, most especially if it clearly depicts an emotion: high, wailing woodwinds for sadness and longing, low background violin notes for danger.  You can do this exercise a couple of ways—either get some CDs from the library that you’ve never heard before, or find a few of your favorite instrumental songs.  If you choose the former, then you’re in a position to freewrite, or work on a story you’re stuck on.  Just randomly choose a song (some boom boxes have a convenient random button) and start writing as it plays.  Sometimes, what you’re writing only uses the song’s emotion for a few sentences, and that’s all right; but don’t stop the music, just keep writing.  If you’re into what you’re putting down, your mind will automatically tune out the music, but it’s still there as background.

 

The other way to go is this: if you know what you need to write but just can’t get it out, find a song that fits the emotion.  I, for instance, used a mournful song when I was writing a story about a fallen friend (Vitora the bat’s best friend Fidget the robin), and it was probably one of my best writings ever.  It just wouldn’t have been the same without the music there to help me along, to get my gears going in the right direction.

 

T is for twisted clichés.  Yeah, yeah, we all know how the prince rescues the princess from the evil witch.  But what if the not-so-evil witch was rescued by the prince from the evil princess?  And clichés are not always so, well, blatant; often, they’re more subtle, such as the hero having a sword.  Hey, why can’t the hero have a spear or something instead?  And what’s with the girl always getting her guy?  Let them break up at the very end.  Distort the most classic of storylines for a humorous (or not so humorous) change of pace.

 

U is for unaccustomed reading and writing.  Most of us have a genre that we’re most comfortable with—fantasy or romance or even non-fiction.  So if you always grab up the latest Dragons book in your spare time, leave it alone and try a poem or two instead.  Familiarize yourself with other genres, first by reading selections, then by writing.  Essays aren’t your thing?  Write one, then, for two reasons: one, you need the practice (trust me, everyone I know who would have a reason to says I’ll be doing tons of essays in college) and two, it’ll open your mind to something new.  If you’ve never touched a romance novel in your life, borrow one from the library (though you may want to choose carefully and get one that you won’t find offensive or embarrassing).  Often, ideas that are hovering in the back of your mind can only come out in the form of a specific genre, and if you aren’t well-rounded in your reading and writing, grand schemes may be lost forever in the hidden niches of your brain.

 

V is for vacuuming.  Yes, you read that correctly—I said vacuuming.  Or showering, if you prefer; maybe even raking the yard is your thing.  Just a monotonous activity during which you can let your mind wander.  Frequently, I will hop in the shower and emerge moments later with two accomplishments under my belt: I’m clean, and I’ve got a snappy new story idea (or, in some cases, the answer to a problem).  It’s funny how often I’m called by my mother when she’s in the shower so that she can tell me something she thought up—yep, we call it her ‘thinking time’.  Don’t stop and map out where you want your train of thought to go as you’re doing your activity—let it wander random tracks at will.

 

W is for what ifs.  Often, when I read a novel and am interrupted, I’ll stop halfway through a paragraph and will have to leave it hanging for a while.  The thought of ‘what if…’ is often the only thing that keeps me from throttling the person who intruded on my precious reading time, and the question keeps running through my head as I perform whatever task required: ‘what if…?’  What if the main character loses that medallion?  What if the villain finds out about the stolen horse?  The questions vary from long, complicated wonderings to the simplest query, but it keeps my mind busy.  There are two ways to tap this resource—one, by writing fan-fics based on the phrase ‘what if’.  Pick a spot in the novel that annoyed you to no end.  Perhaps the main character never ended up exploring that intruiging passageway that was so wonderfully described and then left to rot in the reader’s mind.  Well, then, what if he had explored it?  What then?  Would the villain have been defeated in the end?  And there’s no limit to these questions—every single narrative sentence that has a verb in it can be challenged (and some dialogue, too), although some will end up with more exciting results than others.

 

Or, if you prefer, you can use this technique on your own stories when you’re stuck.  OK, so now he’s at the edge of a cliff, about to be pushed off to his doom.  What if a cat with wings swoops down and bears him to a safe place?  (Sorry, family joke.)  What if he makes it all the way to the bottom, only to land on foam mattresses and realize that those masked kidnappers are playing a practical joke on him?  Think of five different ways to answer the what if question that you’re stuck on and then order them from craziest to most practical.  Use and develop the one you deem best (or throw them all away and start over from a different point).

 

X is for eXploring foreign lands.  (OK, that was lame.  But X is hard, you know?)  Go to the library and find some interesting, picture-filled books on other countries.  Then plan a vacation—a very rough outline of locations to visit—as though you were someone other than yourself.  You may end up with a character (and a ready-made real-life story) out of this, or you may already have a character in mind when you do it.  At any rate, it’s a way to add realistic flavor to your stories.

 

Y is for your acquaintances.  Yeah, you know, those people you’re acquainted with?  Use them as characters.  Do what’s called a ‘person profile’—write a short paragraph or outline (see end of article) that details different parts of them: physical description, attitude, accent, anything.  Tweak some stuff, too (it can be a problem if you start using people in your stories without their permission—especially if you’re one of the authors who loves to do nasty drastics to your characters): if your cousin drools on his pillow sometimes, then make him slobber gallons every night.  Even pets can make excellent characters, especially with fine-tuning.  And don’t just use the people/animals themselves—take their experiences and mess with those as well.

 

Z is for zilch.  Zero.  Zip.  Nothing.  Find a dark, silent room, bring a blanket, and curl up in a comfortable position.  Then, for approximately ten to twenty minutes, don’t move if you can help it.  This activity is a lot like vacuuming, in that you simply let your mind wander while your body does minimal work.  The lack of light keeps you from being distracted by your eyes, and the silence does the same to your ears.  When the time is up, go ahead and turn on the light; write down what you thought about.  Maybe all you feel like doing with this raw material is creating a journal entry; or you might take it to the next level and write the raw draft of a poem.  Several of these sessions may even present enough material for a short story—or even an entire novel!

 

Hope you enjoyed—and can use—the material in this article.  It was fun to write, at any rate, and I can’t remember the last I cranked out seven pages of non-fiction in such a short time (two days).  At any rate…happy authoring!

 

 

 

 

Here’s a basic character template:

 

Name:

 

Species:

 

Gender:

 

Age:

 

Physical Appearance:

 

Personality:

 

History:

 

Motivation/Long-term Goals:

 

Equipment:

 

Accent:

 

Mannerism:

 

 

 

And now, for the prompt list!  (Borrowed in part from Blazing Pencils)

 

Emotions

 

Sadness

 

Happiness

 

Anger

 

Fear

 

Hate

 

Love

 

 

Experiences

 

Firsts

 

Lasts

 

Bests

 

Worsts

 

 

People and Places

 

Home

 

Mother

 

Father

 

Grandparents

 

Siblings

 

Vacation

 

 

Random!

 

Strawberry patch

 

Horses

 

Imagination

 

Coffee

 

Rattle

 

Flying