I’ve been doing a complete re-write of my novel. I’m not quite at the climax, but I can see it from here. I’ve been working with my novel for a long time, so I thought I knew my characters. But in the re-writes, they’ve become a little unfamiliar. And because I don’t know them well, they’re feeling a little flat.
In my doggedness to reach the end of my novel, I lose my sense of play and creativity. One of my wrong ideas is that I don’t need writing exercises, that I don’t need to generate new ideas.
Of course I couldn’t be more wrong. New ideas are exactly what I need to bring my characters to life.
I was working at my day job and looking for a new podcast to listen to. I found: Inside Creative Writing, by Brad Reed. In Episode 3, Sparking your Creativity, Brad gives us two different idea generators to use on a character, place, or plot. The one I tried went like this:
Random Metaphor
There are random noun generators on the internet. (Who knew?) The idea is use one to generate a noun. Then write a list of everything you can think of that relates to the noun. (He goes through a descriptive process using a canoe as a metaphor.)
You’re not actually going to use the metaphor. But you are going to look through the list to see which ideas resonate with you.
I applied this exercise to a character in my novel and suddenly it added dimension and plot that really flushed out ideas for the scene I was working on and the next scene, adding to the tension between my main character, and this character—her love interest.
Through this, I found an ex-girlfriend influencing my main love interest in the novel. I wondered why they broke up, so I pulled a tarot card for a story idea on why they broke up. I pulled another tarot card for ideas on the personality type of the ex-girlfriend
It was fun and painless. It flowed out of me like it was already there waiting for me to discover it. Just like that, I’d added a new facet to my character and added depth to my story line. It gave an adrenaline burst to my novel where I’d been feeling lost in the weeds.
A week after having that experience, I was attending the Words Aloud Festival. I took a writing workshop with Prufrock Shadowrunner. After sharing his process with writing poetry, he led us through an exercise to extend your own ideas.
We started with the prompt: In times of anguish, I turn to…
First, we brainstormed all the ideas of what we would turn to. We then picked one of those ideas and brainstormed all of its qualities. We then swapped out the original idea with one of our new ideas and wrote from there.
This exercise took me from my thinking mind, to just beneath it, the subconscious. Both these exercises were using the concept of brainstorming, or something similar to word-association. This can be a fun process and you might be surprised what your mind comes up with. In both exercises, we were to look for the ideas that resonated with us, or sparked our interest which added extra energy.
I came up with the following poem:
In Times of Anguish
In times of anguish, I turn to amber.
Hot liquid flows over my fragility,
Preserving me,
Cooling over time, till hardened.
I wear it like jewellery,
Displaying what once lived inside,
Perfectly encased,
As if I could hold time,
-- Suspended --
Go back ... go back ... go back ...
To where we once were.
Whether working on a new piece or an old piece, you should always make time to play around: New ideas are just waiting for you.
- https://www.bradreedwrites.com/category/podcast/
- http://wordsaloud.ca/
- for video performances of all the Words Aloud performances:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmlIdSd-9lS1TJsS0zCC6Xw - Look for Prufrock’s performance to be up soon on the Words Aloud You Tube channel. Or search and you’ll find other performances online.
