EXERCISE
Items needed: four people, paper, timer.
With the group of four, rip off three small pieces of paper each.
On one, write down a type of room in a house. Could be a big fancy house or a very ordinary house. (Kitchen, laundry room, etc.)
Fold it in half, and write 1 on the outside.
On the next, write down a luxurious material—could be a fabric, a gem, a type of glass, a beautiful metal, anything. Something sumptuous.
Fold it in half, and write 2 on the outside.
On the third, write down something organic, something that can decay. Something that would transform if left in a room over time. It can be alive at that moment or dead.
Fold in half, and write 3.
Now, pass these around so that everyone gets three slips from three different people. Don’t open them yet.
I’m a big believer in the element of surprise here, as a way to trick the mind into going to new places. There’s a formality to this set-up but it only helps.
Set the timer for ten minutes. The wonderful and inspiring Lynda Barry is big on timers, so I’m taking a cue from her here. They do add an element of intensity that can be helpful.
Open up 1. And then open up 2.
The room in this house (1) is made almost entirely out of 2.
How unusual! Please describe. How did it come to be? What does it look like? How did the architects figure out how to make such a room out of such an unusual material? Why? What about the standard items of this room, made out of this very non-standard medium? (A ruby sink—how does that work?)
At ten minutes, the timer will ding. Somewhere inside this gorgeous room is 3. Perhaps starting to rot. Open up 3. It’s not at all clear how 3 got there in the first place.
Set the timer for ten more minutes, and write about the new presence of 3 in 1 and 2. How did it get there? Why? Is there a person there with it? Or a history? Allow the tone to darken here.
Read and share.
If alone, a writer can do this in a few ways. He can write the slips of paper himself and make a few piles so that the combo is a surprise. Or, she can go online to find words that are a little out of her usual wordpile. It just helps to get jogged out of our standard choices. The new word opens up much more than just a word—it releases a whole new set of imagery and with that, feelings and ideas.
Or the solo writer could ask friends to write down five materials, five rooms, and five organic materials on little slips of paper and then, without looking, bring these home and do the exercise five times.
KIM DOWER
Steal from Your Dreams with a Twist of Fevered Writing
KIM DOWER is a poet with two collections: Air Kissing on Mars (Red Hen Press, 2010) and Slice of Moon (Red Hen Press, 2014). Her poems have appeared in journals including Ploughshares, Eclipse, Rattle, and Barrow Street. She has taught creative writing at Emerson College and teaches Come Dressed as Your Favorite Poem, at Antioch University Los Angeles.
One of our great poets, John Berryman (The Dreams Songs), says that poems “are only meant to terrify and comfort.”
I often think about that when I write. This is why, perhaps, so many wonderful poems have a bit of the otherworldly, fantastical, or horrific lurking in them. Writers may be advised to “write what we know,” to write from our own experience, but as a poet I’ve found it can be more surprising and revealing to write about what I don’t know—to lie and pretend; to imagine the worst (or the best), the “what ifs.” When I write about what I’ve experienced, I flip it on its side: twist, add, embellish; try to create as unique an experience as I possibly can. I want my poems to be authentic and ring true, yet I’m always asking myself, Is this as surprising as it can be? Is this as fantastic?
One of the best ways I’ve found to jump-start my imagination and create imagery, yet still feel emotionally connected to the material, is to tap into my dreams. Certainly dreams come from our own experiences, and they come ready-made—filtered through our hearts, minds, and obsessions, already twisted and flipped—our daily rituals, random memories, deepest fears turned inside out, perverted, obscured, coming back to us in another vision, another version of the day. Our subconscious offers each of us incredible material from which to work.
The trick is to grab those luscious details while they’re hot and write them down fast. My exercise involves merging two practices—recording our dreams and automatic writing (also known as fevered writing). Automatic writing—writing without stopping or editing in one continuous flow—while recording our dreams is guaranteed to awaken our imaginations and create surprising ideas, because our mind can sift through our sleep memory while darting in and out of our awake thoughts and we’re able to drill right into the rich imagery found in both our sleeping and awakened subconscious.
This exercise requires nothing but a pad and pen, a clock or stopwatch, and most importantly, you having just awakened, coming right out of a dream state (pre-coffee, still in bed if possible). The least you will get out of this practice are a brand-new word coupling or two that will delight and inspire, and a few images and ideas you’ve never thought of before that may even terrify you (and eventually your readers!).
You will see just how otherworldly you are inside your own head. Keep your pad and pen by your bed and repeat this exercise each morning for as long as you can. The fantastical may happen!
EXERCISE
Wake up. Do not think.
Grab your pad and pen or pencil—whichever glides best and quickest for you.
Do not think.
Put your timer on for 12 minutes, or look at your clock and give yourself 12 minutes.
Your task will be to write for 12 minutes without stopping, without editing, without lifting your pen from the paper. One continuous flow of thought.
Record your dream, if you remember it, and if you don’t, just start writing about what you think you may have dreamed. Be as visual as you can. Write about the cross-eyed lions chasing you, the icy mountain you jumped from, the giant bird fluttering in your face, the clouds that devoured you. Write about the animals you were riding through the park, the ones you brought home to live with you. Write about breathing as you fell through the sky or the car you raced through an undiscovered planet. What did it feel like? Where did it take you?
Write and don’t stop until your timer goes off or until you notice it’s been 12 minutes. Read what you’ve written.
Do this exercise anytime! Even after coffee. After dinner! Fill pads and more pads. Pretend you are someone else while you write—different sex, age, nationality. What did this person dream?
Again, never lift your pen. Do not edit. Write. Record fragments from dreams.
At the end of each week, read all the words you’ve filled your pads with. You will find a poem or story waiting for you.
BRIAN JAMES FREEMAN
Writing About Your Childhood
BRIAN JAMES FREEMAN’s novels, novellas, short stories, essays, and interviews have been published by Warner Books, Borderlands Press, Book-of-the-Month Club, Leisure, and many others. He is the managing editor of Cemetery Dance magazine. He is also the publisher of Lonely Road Books where he has worked with Stephen King, Guillermo del Toro, and other acclaimed authors.
Writing about your childhood might seem like a strange topic for a book that will help you write speculative fiction, but many short stories and novels have scenes featuring an incident from a character’s childhood for a good reason: Showing where the character has come from can quickly answer questions about why they are the way they are.
Several of my books, such as The Painted Darkness and Black Fire, feature a back-and-forth structure where chapters alternate on a continuing basis between a character’s past (“then”) and his present (“now”), showing how events from earlier in his life affect and even foreshadow events in the future.
For Black Fire, I actually wrote the “then” chapters first and then I wrote the “now” chapters so the events could mirror and echo off one another. If something dramatic happened to a character in a “then” chapter, the long-term effect might be revealed in a “now” chapter. Nothing too heavy-handed, just subtle touches to show the reader where this character came from, while building the mystery behind the strange events in the peculiar story.
Now this doesn’t mean you should do what I do and write all of your books in the “now” and “then” style. In fact, if you want to write popular fiction, I’d recommend against this structure, because it isn’t very commercial.
How can you use this technique to make your speculative fiction stronger? Flashbacks are generally considered bad form, but you could certainly reference events or incidents from the character’s past and then show, in subtle ways, how the character has grown or changed over time due to those events.
You can also use the reader’s knowledge of these past events to make what’s happening in the story more intense or thrilling. For example, if you reference a character’s terrifying childhood incident involving snakes, it’ll be even more powerful for the reader when you throw that character into a room full of snakes later in the story.
Including key information about a character’s past is an effective technique for any kind of fiction, not just speculative fiction, so it’s a strong skill to develop for all of your writing. Good luck!
EXERCISE
1. Close your eyes and think of your earliest childhood memory. Picture as much as you can about the event: where you were, who was there, etc. Now open your eyes and write what you’ve remembered as a scene in a story and try to make it as real as you can by describing the sights, sounds, smells, and emotions as best as you can recall. What you can’t recall, make up! This is fiction after all.
2. Think about something that happened early in life that you now realize affected decisions/choices you made later on. Write that event as a scene in a story, and then write a scene showing the long-term effects of the event on the character.
3. If you’re already writing a story, is there an opportunity to give a character (hero or villain) more depth by showing a scene from earlier in life that helps the reader understand how the character ended up where he or she is today? Don’t just say the character “had a bad childhood.” Show the reader.
BRITTANY WINNER
How to Channel Your Imagination
BRITTANY WINNER and her identical twin sister Brianna are America’s youngest multiple-award-winning authors and writing teachers. Their first novel The Strand Prophecy became a national best seller on their thirteenth birthday. They have now written four novels, a graphic novel, and a writing book. They were recognized as prodigies by The World Council for Gifted and Talented Children.
There is nothing like coming up with the first idea for a new story. It’s thrilling; I can see from the first vision that a new world is waiting for me. I want to dig deeper; I want to know what happens next. It’s this passion that drives me, and the reason I became an author.
I had a love for storytelling for as long as I can remember. I am addicted to the idea that nothing is impossible and that incredible things can happen. The stories I read when I was young were mysteries and adventures that took me to places I had never been before. When I read about how the underdog would win, I was inspired. I knew that when I closed my eyes there were an infinite number of worlds to be discovered, and I couldn’t wait to open the doors in my mind and walk through them.
Though you cannot tell while reading this essay (thanks to spell check), I am dyslexic. That’s right, I am a dyslexic author, a living oxymoron. It doesn’t affect me much now. I have learned ways to overcome it with time and determination, but I wasn’t always like this.
When I was younger, my parents always told me I should write a book, and I always responded the same way. “Writing is boring and hard! I HATE it.” The truth was I didn’t hate it. I was afraid of it. Frightened of failure and being judged, terrified I would never finish or it wouldn’t be good.
But at night I would close my eyes and dream of imaginary worlds. During the day, my sister and I would create stories and draw pictures. But neither of us intended to write our stories down; we are identical twins after all, and both of us had dyslexia. We may have always stayed this way, making up excuses and never starting out of fear, but our father had no intention of letting that happen. He told us to begin writing a novel. He told us that he believed in us, that it would be fun and that we would enjoy it. We were always open to new ideas and loved adventures. So out of curiosity, we started to create a new story. We both closed our eyes for one minute and imagined a new world.
That story became our first novel. We began writing in fourth grade and ultimately our novel became a national best seller on our thirteenth birthday. Now, four novels later, we have never stopped closing our eyes and dreaming. In every person’s life, there are good times and bad times. It is easier to create new story ideas when life is good. But when you are stressed-out with everyday problems and your source of energy is coffee, writer’s block is common. That bolt of lightning or vision doesn’t come. You can get caught in a swirl of negativity.
We have refined a way to channel that lightning and create your vision whenever you want. It is a method that is inspired by what we have done our entire lives.
Here is an example. My summary is: “The woman shot the gun.” The genre I want to write in is science fiction.
I set my timer for one minute and visualize this scene in as much detail as I can, thinking about my summary.
Then I write it down.
A tall woman wearing a black armored police uniform pointed the laser rifle. The gun was a sleek sliver and the trigger was cold against her finger. Her mind raced. Will I be able to live with myself? she thought. What kind of person will this make me? I never thought I would have to do this. The seconds felt like minutes as she stood pointing the weapon at the doorway. She knew she had to make a decision. A moment later she closed her eyes and pulled the trigger. The laser blasted the door’s control panel. Its parts slammed violently onto the ground through the sparks and black smoke. She stared at the door for a moment. The control panel sealed the door and cut off the oxygen supply for those behind the door. She took out her small black communicator and pressed the top button. “I trapped the escaped criminals in the west wing; they will be dead in a few minutes.”
This was the job she signed up for, a hard choice to do what was right, even if that meant she could never sleep soundly again.
EXERCISE
THE IMAGINE METHOD
1. Get a timer and set it for one minute.
2. Pick a genre.
3. Create an eight-word summary for your scene.
4. Start the timer.
For one minute close your eyes and think about your summary and genre you choose. Grab the first image that comes to your mind and don’t let it go.
Ask yourself these questions while you are visualizing your scene.
Where is your character?
What is going on around him/her?
What does your character look like and what is he or she wearing?
After the timer goes off, write it all down. Keep continuing to create and experiment until you can see the scene in your mind, or create the scene that comes next in your story. If you just close your eyes and imagine, the possibilities are endless.
VONDA N. MCINTYRE
An Exercise in Dreamsnake
VONDA N. MCINTYRE is a science fiction writer and founding member of Book View Café, a publishing co-op. Her book Dreamsnake (Spectra, 1994) won the Nebula, Hugo, Locus, and Pacific Northwest Booksellers Awards.
Writers all dread the question, “Where do you get your ideas?” Not because it’s a stupid question. It’s a rather profound quest
ion. It’s usually difficult, or impossible, to answer. The question inspires such apprehension that various cynical, sarcastic, or amusing answers have evolved, such as, “I subscribe to the Plot-of-the-Month Club.”
But Dreamsnake is unusual. I know where I got the idea: Avram Davidson’s exercise at the 1972 Clarion Writers’ Workshop. Avram made up two lists of words, one pastoral, one technological. Each of us drew a word from each list. We were to write a story using both words. We went off to lunch, moaning piteously about the ridiculous assignment. How could you write a story based on Alpha Centauri and laughter, or psychoanalysis and lizard, or snake and cow?
How did I end up with snake and cow? Maybe the slips got mixed up. Maybe Avram didn’t consider snakes pastoral. Maybe it was a joke. In any event, I thought life was hard.
“Why don’t you name your main character Snake?” said one of the other students. Then laughed. She was one of the few people in the class who thought her two words were promising. (I don’t remember what words she drew, but I do remember that she wrote a good story.)
“All right, I will!” I said, provoked.
That evening, the dorm hallway was deserted. Nobody stood around talking; nobody climbed the walls. Only one class member actually did climb the walls—and hide behind the ceiling beam to drop down on unwary passersby—though another liked to climb the roofs looking for ways to steal the gargoyles. Everybody was typing.
Almost everybody. I was stymied. What was I to do with the wretched cow?
Somewhere around midnight the secondary meaning of cow, the verb form, wandered in out of left field (or possibly the back forty), and I wrote, “The little boy was frightened . . .”
Now Write! Page 5