Before Writing, Exercise Your Creativity

By Sally Morem

Here are a number of exercises you can do that will help jump-start your writing

creativity.

One: Type in at random a number of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs that

interest you. You can create a 5 x 5 block of words, something like this:

Principality Declaration Cobweb Crosseyed Leave

Search Named Rolaine Griefstruck Magpie

Comfort Stirrup Fronted Looping Abominable

Turmoil Sabine Dimwitted Reveal Oblique

Whole Bread Distill Degenerate Traverse

Now wander through this block of words any way you want—top to bottom, back

to front, zig-zagging—and write down any string of words that strikes you as

interesting. Perhaps Oblique Degenerate Distill Dimwitted Sabine Turmoil.

What kind of story idea does this string bring to mind? What kind of character?

What kind of setting. Scribble down ideas until you’ve wrung that string dry.

Create another string. Perhaps Stirrup Named Rolaine Griefstruck Looping

Reveal. Play with the words. Turn them into a sentence. Turn them into a

character background essay. Turn them into a brief outline of a story.

Create smaller or larger blocks of words and play with those words. You could fill

an entire printed page with randomly selected words and select strings of them,

also randomly. Save them in your computer for when you’re really stuck in your

writing. You may be able to jumpstart a dull scene with such strings of words.

Two: We think in terms of words, numbers, images, sounds, and other senses.

When you are writing a scene, use a different method of thinking each time you

go through the scene. Note how differently the scene turns out when you think

verbally as opposed to mathematically or aurally. Play with a scene in this

manner. Combine the best aspects of all the versions of that scene.

Three: There are times, especially in the middle of a story, when you are at a loss

as to what your characters should do next. Write down an action you consider

boring. Now play with it. Try the opposite, run the action backwards, eliminate

some part of the action, double the action, make the action far less specific, make

it much more specific. In other words, manipulate the action the way you’d

manipulate clay.

Here are some more strategies you can use to find far more interesting actions for

your characters to take: Have your character predict the consequences or plan

the consequences of an action out loud. Have him recall a specific time he took a

similar action. What happened as a result? Have him search for something.

What is it? He will occasionally question himself. What is that question? Have

your character take a guess, assume something not in evidence, see something or

some action as a symbol for something else, copy someone else’s action,

exaggerate or understate a point during dialogue, repeat a statement for

emphasis, not say something other characters expected that character to say,

make a list, lay out a diagram, commit to doing something, defer an action until

later, compare himself or herself to someone else, hold back important

information, associate something with something else, or imagine something.

You may find several very interesting things for your character to do by going

through these and other strategies. Describe them all. Figure out the best places

to put them in your story. If they don’t fit in, save them for another story.

Four: Ask your characters the Watergate question: What did you know, and when

did you know it? You may be able to generate extremely interesting conflicts by

creating situations in which one character assumes another knows something or

thinks something that that character has never known or thought. Surprise your

reader. Create a character who really should know something—the reader will

expect it, but the character turns out to be clueless. Some of the most involving

situations for readers are when a character doesn’t know something the reader

knows. Do this when it’s really important for the character to learn that one

particular thing. The reader will be cheering that character on.

Five: If you’ve enjoyed a novel, take three aspects of its story structure and

combine them in a new way. Use this new structure in your novel. Keep

modifying it until it’s fully yours and no one else would ever guess where you got

the idea from.

Six: Are you having trouble with your descriptions? Practice describing by

imagining something vividly and writing down what you imagine. Begin with

things you know—a friend’s face, sucking on a lemon drop, smelling fresh-baked

brownies, the softness of your dog when you pet him, and so on. Write your

experiences down as precisely as possible.

After enough practice rounds, sit down and imagine a part of a scene you are

trying to write—a shocked character’s face, a rundown kitchen with soup

simmering on the stove top, an angry encounter between two characters, the

sound of a band playing at a night club—any aspect that really appeals to the

senses. As you gain practice, your writing will gain precision.

Seven: Make lists. You don’t have to restrict these to to-do lists. You can create

lists that enhance your creativity. Don’t prejudge items in your list. Write down

everything that occurs to you, even nutty things. The craziest ideas may have the

most juice in them. Save the lists and add to them for all the stories you are

working on now and those you may write in the future.

When building a character, make lists of what’s in her wardrobe or medicine

chest, what pieces of furniture and knick-knacks are in her bedroom and living

room, what her favorite recipes are, events she remembers from childhood and

young adulthood, descriptions of her friends, her favorite places to relax and why

she enjoys each one, the usual and unusual ways she has reacted to events, and

so on.

When creating an outline for a novel, start by creating a list of your favorite

scenes in movies, plays, and other novels. Let these ideas help you generate your

own ideas for scenes. Let these primary ideas generate secondary ideas, and so

forth. Create lists of scenes in various sequences. Go until you find a story

sequence that’s surprising and yet somehow fitting to the characters’ natures.

Create lists of potential goals for your major characters, both the heroes and the

villains. Create lists of possible efforts they may make towards achieving these

goals and how they can go wrong.

When deciding on what actions your character should take that would create

more conflict and reader interest, make lists of possible actions and

consequences. Make lists of light conflicts that may entice the reader to keep on

reading at the beginning, building conflicts that hold interest throughout the

middle, and grand conflicts and resolutions at the end. Create lists of surprising

consequences.

While working on the second draft of a novel, create lists of potential

foreshadowings. Write down which scenes each should be used in. Create lists of

alternative foreshadowings. These may trigger ideas for powerful new scenes.

When using an existing setting or inventing a setting, make lists of the many

aspects of the place you could include in your story descriptions. Include ideas on

how the place may enhance the story you are trying to tell. Make sure those lists

include far more material than your novel could ever handle.

When thinking about all the ways to make your novel cohere as one well-

constructed story, make lists of things that can serve as ongoing symbols, lists of

useful transitions, lists of descriptions that may echo each other during the

beginning and ending scenes of the novel and haunt the reader’s memory when

the reading is done.

When thinking about things that could cause and sustain conflict and interest,

think about those things in your own life that aggravate you. Large things and

small. List everything, everything from bad coffee to nuclear war. You may find

that some of the small ‘pet-peeves’ of life will turn out to be useful in creating

character tags, telling details in setting descriptions, or the kind of straw that

broke the camel’s back scenario—a trigger for a genuine conflict. Here are a few

of these small details: relatives visiting, broken coffeemaker, ID cards that don’t

scan, broken pencils, sticky kitchen floors, noisy clocks, snagged nails, cigarette

burns, wobbly tables, one missing sock, red tape, dull knives, cold tea, tangled

laundry, lost buttons, yappy dogs, telephone salesmen, and static electricity. Use

this list to remind yourself of your own pet-peeves.

Eight: When you have an idea for a novel, any kind of idea, play with it and see if

you can improve it. Try these mental transformations on your idea: Change one

part of it. Add to it. Make it larger. Subtract from it. Make it smaller. Make it

last longer. Make it fall apart. Exaggerate it. Minimize it. Substitute one portion

of it. Rearrange its components. Reverse it in time or in space. Combine it with

other ideas. Separate out its components. Distort it. Harden it. Soften it.

Repeat it. Turn it into a symbol. Turn it into an abstraction. Dissect it.

You’ll find that as you engage your creativity with these and other techniques,

you will never, ever run out of ideas for your stories. Your stories will be original,

fully your own. The more you engage in creative thinking, the easier it will

become to create great ideas. It will cease to be work. Have fun with it. As the

golf commercial puts it: Go. Play.