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:
Repeat with Drift
Write a one-paragraph or one-page scene. To write that scene, play a simple connect-the-dots game with words circled from prior warmups. Go trawling through your notebooks with a pen of a second color, or if you have nothing on hand, do a quick set of minute lists, select words from there, and weave them into a your scene.
Then rewrite the paragraph (or page), starting with the same first few words but allowing the details, imagery, and action drift just a little. Reweave the scene at a slant, so it becomes a slightly different scene.
Repeat as many times as you like. Let each new iteration make space for something new and true to appear in the scene.
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