EXERCISE: Not Pandora's Box

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting 17 Jan 2011

I usually don't remember my dreams, but this morning there was a trace of one rumbling around in my head when I woke up. It was pretty vague and confused, but here's what I think was happening...

Mike felt pretty good as he walked towards the car in the parking garage. Dinner, a show, good friends, and of course, the woman that he was starting to feel very serious about. A nice, relaxing evening.

He unlocked the car doors, and stepped back as everyone started to get in. That's when he saw the cardboard box sitting near the wall. He frowned, but stepped over and flipped the lid open. Then he whistled soundlessly.

"Hey, Jim? Come over here and take a look at this." Mike looked around the empty garage as Jim walked over.

Jim's eyes grew wide, then he knelt and started going through the box. He looked up at Mike and said, "Guns? And ammunition? Man, there's enough here for a small war. What the heck?"

That's where I woke up. A small party of friends, coming back to their car, discovers a box full of guns and ammunition.

I have to admit, I'm kind of curious as to what happened next. So I thought I'd toss it out as an exercise. Go ahead and change the characters, put them in a setting that you prefer, but tell us what happens when a small group of friends finds a box full of guns and ammunition. What do they do with it?

Just write.

TECH: Where do you get your ideas?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting 2 Feb 2011

I've been musing about several ideas, prompted by David B. Coe's posting over here http://www.sfnovelists.com/2011/01/21/a-new-idea/

Very briefly, David seems to think that ideas, like the prompting of the muse, are basically not under our control. You can't tell where they come from, you can't make them appear when you want them to, they're just some kind of unpredictable spark. Oh, he admits that we can use "what if" to help develop ideas, but that initial spark is something special.

There's a part of me that agrees with David. You probably can't sit down and make yourself come up with one great idea when needed. On the other hand, you can't roll a specific desired number with dice either, although if you let me have a few rolls, I'll bet it turns up. In the same way, while we probably can't sit down and come up with one great idea, there are certainly some steps we can take to help produce a crop of ideas, and then pick out some good ones.

What do I mean? Well, I'm thinking of ideas as somewhat like a precipitate in a supersaturated solution. So to start with, you need a supersaturated solution of ideas -- lots of bits and pieces, lots of images, characters, events and such floating around in the old brainpan. How do you do that?

I used to have a book called Pictures for Writing. It was just a collection of somewhat odd pictures intended to spark your thinking. Nowadays, you can go over to the google images, or YouTube, or lots of other places, and poke around. Plenty of images to kick your thinking!

Or watch some TV or movies. Yes, yes, they aren't great models for writers, but... see what they suggest. Heck, I've been doing some summaries of TV cartoons. It's kind of relaxing, seeing how Shaun the Sheep sets up a problem, runs through several try-fail cycles, and then resolves the problem with a laugh.

Read some articles, do some searches, read some books. Read the news, take a gander through a tech blog, see what people are yacking about online.

Take a walk outside, visit a museum, contemplate some great art.

Heck, see what's on the Discovery Channel (if you are in a place where you have that).

One way or another, fill your head with stuff.

Okay? What methods do you use to set up your supersaturated solution?

Next, we'll look at what you can toss into your solution to get precipatation!