This lesson was about ways to come up with ideas for writing when you’re struggling to come up with stuff to write about. It covers 6 methods
- Index Cards – Get 4 piles of equal numbers of cards. Write names (different names) on the cards of two piles, places on the cards of the third pile, and verbs like danced, murdered, mooned, etc. on the last. Shuffle the cards and pull a card from each pile to get an idea.
- Five paragraphs of five things – Write five paragraphs about five things you would do to entertain yourself if you were alone for 5 days.
- Pick a random word from a dictionary, or as I did use a website to do it.
- Journaling and Story Ideas – Basically find a list of general things to write about and write about them.
- Observation – Look at something and then write a story about it. It can be anything. I used an “I Voted” sticker on my desk.
- Free Writing – Just write whatever is in your head at the time.
- Webbing – OK, bear with me. Write a word down, it can be anything. Circle it. Then write related words around it, drawing lines out from the center work. Continue doing that, it ends up looking like a spider web but will hopefully generate some ideas as you associate the words.
The lesson was to pick two of these and use them to come up with stories. They had to be at least three paragraphs. I used dictionary and observation methods. The word I chose was Quaky and the thing I observed was an “I Voted” sticker.
Update 2023-03-17:
Full points again.
Wonderful work!
Dictionary method:
Word: Quaky
- inclined to quake; shaky; tremulous
Sarah is poking at the ground with a stick. The earth trembles like gelatin, sending out ripples from the point where she’s poking with the stick. She thinks it’s the strangest sight she’s ever seen. It isn’t like anything she’s seen before. It isn’t a case of debris floating on top of a body of water. Not only is the earth warping with the spreading ripples but rocks, sticks, and whatever lay on the ground warps as if the waves passed through them. She takes a step back and turns to her colleague Fred and starts to speak, “I, I’ve never…” but she can’t find the words to continue. So, she turns back to look at the plot of land that looked otherwise normal.
Fred touches her shoulder gently and points off to the left at a deer on the edge of the plot of land they’re investigating. They slowly step back into the treeline behind them and watch. The deer steps out cautiously and looks around. Confident there isn’t a predator in the immediate area it moves forward toward a grassy spot which Sarah and Fred know to be within the affected area. Its hooves sink a bit as it moves in but it doesn’t immediately take notice. Then it stops finally noticing there is something unusual about the ground beneath its hooves. It brings its nose to the ground and sniffs and then touches the ground, which starts quaking. This startles the deer, which starts to run forward. But its hooves sink deep into the ground, then shoot up as if the ground were a trampoline. The deer looks like it is high-stepping for a moment but then it bounces at least 2 ft up and lands on its side, its body sinking down below the surface before shooting up.
Sarah thinks it looks like the deer is in a bouncy house like her niece had at her last birthday party. The deer is in a panic now, the quaky ground making it difficult for it to make any progress as it bounces, doing the occasional flip or rotation before hitting the surface and bouncing again. Sarah and Fred step out from the woods and watch in wonder. It’s like something out of a slap-stick comedy. Fred is smiling and chuckling at the sight of the poor deer.
After about 30 seconds the deer moved about 20 ft into the gelatinous area Sarah and Fred had mapped out earlier. It pops up into the air again but it hits the ground with a thud this time, as the ground didn’t give as it had been. The deer rolls onto its belly and pauses, either momentarily stunned by the impact or shocked that the ground is no longer quaky. After just a moment, though, it recovers, stands, and turns to run back toward the point it exited from the forest earlier. But it barely gets to its feet when the earth beneath it opens up like a giant mouth, in fact, it looks just like a giant mouth opening, leaving the deer suspended for a moment in space. What looks like a large tongue lashes up from the hole … mouth, wrapping itself around the deer, and retreats back down the hole with the deer. The hole then closes leaving no trace that there had been a hole or a deer there just a moment before.
****
“Over here!”, yells a young man in a sheriff uniform. “I found something.”
An older man makes his way to the young man and looks at two backpacks leaning on a tree on the edge of a large hole in the ground. He looks through the back-packs pockets. “This is Dr. Sarah’s Mathew’s pack, “ he says, looking around. “And, I’m pretty sure that’s Dr. Fred Marlin’s.” He stands up and looks around some more. Then follows up with, “It doesn’t look like an animal attack. And their packs haven’t been touched either? Like they were just here. So, where have they been for the last week?”
Observation:
An “I Voted” sticker.
Arlan cautiously makes his way through the house’s living room toward the kitchen. He pauses at the doorway to the kitchen, quickly poking his head in looking to the right, then quickly to the left. Not seeing anything he enters and heads toward the refrigerator. He puts his hand on the refrigerator door handle, pauses and takes a deep breath, and pulls the door open. It only opens a couple of inches before he slams it shut and steps back gasping for air from the stench of rotting food.
Next to the refrigerator is a narrow door. He opens it slowly and looks inside. It’s a pantry closet but it’s too dark to make much out, so he pulls a small flashlight from a pocket, turns it on, and points the light into the pantry. There are boxes of various prepared dry foods and cake mixes which have all been chewed on by rodents leaving just bits of cardboard, small piles of the boxes’ contents spread about, and a lot of rat droppings. But, there are also several cans of beans, corn, and chili which Arlan collects up and puts into his backpack. He continues around the kitchen, checking all the cabinets but doesn’t find anything else worth taking.
He leaves the kitchen and goes to the stairs leading up to the second floor. It is completely dark after the first few feet, so Arlan takes out his flashlight and shines it up the stairs. There is nothing. He looks around and then grabs a small glass nick-nack thing from a small table in the foyer and tosses it up to the second floor. It makes a loud thump as it hits the floor and rolls back making a smaller thump as it hits the far wall. He continues to watch the top of the stairs, turning his head a little to the side to listen for any sounds, but there is only silence, so he starts to slowly make his way up the stairs.
When he reaches the top of the stairs he looks quickly left, then right using the flashlight to illuminate the dark hallway. There is nothing there so he steps into the hallway. About 2 ft to the left is a door, to the right, the hallway goes about 15ft with 2 doors on the right and 1 on the left, and 1 at the end. He turns to the left and slowly opens the door.
The room is fairly well-lit due to windows on 2 walls and also light coming from an attached master bath. There is a king-size bed against the far wall with an ornate head and footboard. There are several matching bedroom set pieces. Arlan thinks that they look very expensive as he enters and searches the room. He finds some cash and nice-looking jewelry but leaves them. However, he tries on a pair of quality hiking boots in almost pristine condition and is happy to find they are only a little too big for his feet. “Nothing the wool socks I found won’t fix,” he thinks. In the master bath, he takes some prescription medicine bottles, a first aid kit, and a bottle each of isopropyl alcohol and hydrogen peroxide.
He leaves the master bedroom and heads quietly down the hall, pausing at the stairs to look and listened. Nothing, so he continues. The first door on the right is a small bathroom. He goes in and looks through the cabinets and finds several unopened toothbrushes, an unopened tube of toothpaste, and several rolls of toilet paper, which he puts in his bag.
The next door on the right is open and is a child’s room. Directly across the hall is a closed door. He slowly opens it. The smell of death hits his nose and he recoils a bit and pulls the bandana around his neck up over his nose. He scans the room and sees the source of the smell, a cage with the partially decomposed remains of a couple of hamsters. The room appears to have belonged to a teenager based on the posters on the wall and clothes strewn about the floor. He steps back out, closing the door.
He approaches the last door and slowly turns the knob and pushes forward. As soon as the door cracks, he smells decomposition, but stronger than the room with the hamsters. He slowly pushes the door open to reveal a large room with inclined walls coming to a peak in the center of the room. This is the space over the garage. There are windows along all three walls so the room is well-illuminated. In the center of the large room is the source of the odor.
Laying neatly on the floor are 3 partially decomposed bodies. A woman in a nice summer dress. Arlan thinks he remembers seeing a picture with a man and a woman wearing that dress, smiling on a beach when he was in the master bedroom. Next to the woman are the bodies of a young girl, also in a summer dress, and a boy, in a suit and tie. On the far side of the three bodies is a chair with the remains of a man in a suit, with an “I Voted” sticker still stuck to the lapel. A rifle is still clutched in his decaying hands and the ceiling behind him is splattered with his blood and brains.
Arlans lips curl back behind the bandana as he quietly exclaims, “Jackpot!” He goes around the bodies on the floor and pries the rifle from the dead man’s hands and checks the clip, which has 7 rounds in it, and quietly exclaims, “Yes!” He looks around and notices a couple of boxes on a table by one of the windows so he goes over and picks them up. He suddenly thrusts his hands, still holding the boxes, in the air and starts to jump up and down turning in a circle. “Super double mega jackpot! Arlan for the win!”, he says excitedly but hushed.