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:
memory recall list from Lynda Barry
This is a memory recall exercise from Lynda Barry, variations of which are found in many of her books (Syllabus is a great place to start). Choose an image or object—LB uses “cars,” and “other people’s mothers” as examples. Make a quick list of ten instances in your own life of that thing. Choose one of them to focus on, preferably one that sprung to mind as you made your list—LB always encourages us to go after anything that surfaces without overdetermination on our part.
Draw a big X across a whole page. Visualize yourself in the presence of your chosen object so that it’s a scene in your mind. (If you chose, for example, your best friend’s car, visualize yourself in it on a particular day in a particular place instead of all the times you were ever in that car.)
On your X-page, with a 4-minute timer going, record sensory, present-tense details of the scene. You can either write indiscriminately across the page, ignoring the X, or you can use the quadrants the X provides to locate you in space, so that you record what is ahead, to the sides, and behind you, as if you are positioned at the intersection of the two lines.
Then set a timer for 7 minutes and, on a fresh page, write a description of the scene in the present tense.
here's the full generator archive:
hearing a new voice
Write a description of the room you are in as you write. Root yourself in a clear first-person voice (though feel free to role-play here;
scene from details
Choose a scene or moment from your last 24 hours for a quick, highly compressed study. Start by making a sketchy, diagrammatic map of the
filter approach
Make a list of images or scenes or language ideas that you’ve imagined being part of what you’re making right now, but that haven’t yet
nesting set
Do the “human observation” tuning exercise. Then take something articulated in your tuning and invent a new character to contradict everything you just wrote. Let
flaming beetle
If you did the list of 100 unrelated words last week, find it now. (If you didn’t, do the exercise: write 100 words, each of
two new figures
Do the tuning exercise, “caption meditations,” then take one of the scenes and populate it with two new figures. Follow their conversation. Try to tune
monster soliloquy
Start with the tuning exercise, tuning your monster. Then let the monster soliloquize, if you conjured one. If you instead found a monstrous inclination to
a story guide
Visualize the world of the thing you are writing: its geographic center, its horizons. Then imagine a figure who could know about that world, perhaps
article plunder toward mysterious exchange
Find an article about something you don’t know much about. Circle or highlight twenty words. Write a conversation between two beings that incorporates at least
the new-room-of-the-house dream
Take up the classic dream of finding a new room or wing of the house you live in (or one that you used to live
bookshelf as image pantry
Go to your bookshelves and open one of the books you’ve been meaning to read but haven’t, one that’s been waiting for you for a
following character generator
*The script of the exercise is below. If you lead yourself through this exercise, read each step, do it, and then read the next, and
ballad
(for expanding something already in process) Visualize the world of the thing you are writing: its geographic center, its horizons. Then imagine a figure who
color & temperature
Choose a color and a temperature. Scan your memory for a moment in your life that matched that temperature and whose light or environment held
memory recall list from Lynda Barry
This is a memory recall exercise from Lynda Barry, variations of which are found in many of her books (Syllabus is a great place to
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.
echo, exchange, erasure
Find an article about something you don’t know much about. Circle or highlight twenty words. Write a conversation between two beings that incorporates at least
swerving self-interview
Do a self-interview (wherein you pose yourself questions and then fully answer them) on what you’re interested in writing about. Let each question follow up
empty avenue
Take yourself, in your mind’s eye, to an empty avenue. It could be a dirt road, a suburban causeway, a city street. Follow your interest