Generators
Generators are short prompts for finding new seeds, images, voices — bits and pieces that might fold into your writing. Most generators here are for inventing from scratch; some are marked “for ongoing process” and are specifically framed to help expand the radius of writing that you’ve already embarked on.
here's A Generator dialed up at random:
map of the area
(for building out something that is already in progress)
Draw a compressed geographic map of the region of something you’ve already started writing or imagining. Even if it isn’t located in a coherent place, treat all the locations as neighboring. Even if your writing is abstract or unlocated, treat it as located in abstract, symbolic places. Your map can be out of scale and selective, like an advertising place-mat or the frontispiece of an old children’s book. After you’ve sketched the map, populate it with newcomers, visitors, ghosts, and legends. Who comes into this space, who lingers, who reacts? How do they pass through, where have they come from, where will they go next, in what kind of vehicle do they travel? You can include other things than people: is there a flow of goods? A migration of animals? Then write the story of one of those incursions in exactly 100 words.
here's the full generator archive:
Valley Fold (Generator)
A generative exercise for creating a compact event as a springboard for a story.
Image Wheel
A generator for scenes of linked images Scan your memory of the last 24 hours and find an image — as if seen from a
parable of a minor figure
In your mind’s eye, bring up someone from your writing that figures only minimally in what you’ve written, someone who would be “background” if this
possible shapes
(for a process already in progress) Quickly sketch a diagrammatic representation of your writing so far, its elements, sections, directions. Use this quick sketch as
ceremony of transition
In her essay “The History of Scaffolding,” Lisa Robertson writes: We believe that the object of architecture is to give happiness. For us this would
following paragraph (generator)
Do the tuning version of this exercise, using the writing of another author. then repeat the exercise, but with a paragraph found randomly from your
new room with old images
(for a project in progress) Choose a set of images from a larger scatter of images, perhaps drawn from accumulated warmups left behind in your