Writing Prod

            This week I will be headed up to the LDStoryMakers conference. Because of that there will be no posts for Wednesday and Friday. (Sorry) However, you can expect to hear about the conference next week.
            My mad push to finish my WIP has paid off and my novel End Times is days away from sending off to the publisher. Boo-yah!

            For this week’s writing prompt I am presenting what I call Mix and Mesh. There’s bound to be a better name for it and feel free to suggest one. The basic premise of this prompt is that you randomly take two stories and mix them together. You find a way to put them together in a way that blends key elements from both stories, but in a way that gives you a finished product that is unique.

            Easier said than done, I suppose.
            Keep in mind that there is a lot to work with in a story; plot, theme, character, setting, mood, conflict, etc. Not only can each of these be meshed together in varying degrees to come up with a nearly endless amount of possibilities, but you can choose to take any literal element from a story and make it figurative, and visa versa.
            Anyone familiar with my blog will probably know that I do a fair amount of these just to be funny. This sort of prompt definitely lends itself to that. However, if you’re serious about it this method of creating a story can be especially effective if you draw from powerful stories to begin with.
            In my mind, the best thing about this sort of prompt is that it can help you create a cross genre tale that could really break through. Just imagine a hero facing Nazi cowboys, or working his way through Zombie space. (Okay, it could just be a matter of me being a little tweaked in the first place that makes this sort of possibility so exciting.)

            For my example I am going to make use of two Oscar winning movies. This will allow me to post a couple of pictures (which I need to do more often) to illustrate my point. Those films are:

Ben Hur (1959)

Titanic (1997)

Sea of Fire – After encountering a powerful religious leader, a fisherman and his family are converted to a faith the preaches peace and tolerance that are at odds with the vicious laws and violent nature of the country in which they live. A long time personal rival uses his position as a judge to falsely accuse the family of treason and they are forced to work as slaves during a barbaric race across the ocean. If they win they will be set free to colonize the newly discovered land. If not, they will remain as slaves or die in one of the many sea-battles that are a normal part of the race.

            As always, if you want to participate write up a small story (100-200 words) or the elevator pitch for a novel / screenplay. Then post it, or a link to it, in the comments section below. I’ve included an example that I made up this morning.

            Okay, I couldn’t help myself. Here’s another example just for laughs.

Gladiator (2000)

Chicago (2002)

 

I’m Spartacus – Cross Gladiator with Chicago and you get a musical set in the violent, bloodthirsty height of the Roman Empire. Sing along with the cast through rousing numbers such as No, No, I’m Spartacus and When In Rome – Kill the Romans. Follow Spartacus and his band of gladiators as they break out of the Roman prison and fight their way to Broadway where they realize their unspoken dreams and tell the story of their lives on stage. 

This Week In The Blogverse

            Writing a weekly feature about all of the great blogs you’ve discovered carries the risk that you will eventually run out of subject matter. However, the problem I didn’t foresee was that some of the blogs would have multiple points of interest and I would have to make a choice about which one to spotlight first and wonder how soon I should return to discuss the rest.

            Rachael Harrie has created that very conundrum for me this week. I feel that all of her blogging efforts are a gold mine of opportunities for an unpublished author like me.
            This time out I want to focus on the blogging challenges she offers on a regular basis. For April it was the A to Z Blogging Challenge. She painstakingly listed a different challenge for each day of the month. Wow, that had to have been a real brain buster to come up with that many variations on the A to Z theme.
            Kudos to Rachael for giving so much of her time to host these challenges.
            Participating in a well organized blog challenge offers several benefits to the up and coming writer. One of the most important of these being the opportunity for you to network with your fellow authors. Rachael’s challenges receive an excellent level of participation. You will be submitting creative entries along-side other writers in your chosen genre.
            These challenges represent a fertile field for you to harvest new followers. Each entry you post gives readers another reason to fall in love with your writing. It may be the first time they’ve read any of your work or it could be that this time you handled a theme in a way that really won them over. I know that each time I joined in one of Rachael’s challenges I have seen my number of followers grow.
            During the challenges the participants are encouraged to leave comments about the entries. This may give you a chance to receive feedback on your writing from a larger pool of readers than you normally reach. Although, I don’t recommend you use this as a gage of your writing skill, it can be useful in getting a general idea of how the readers are reacting to it.
            The challenges are the prefect time to stretch those writing muscles and try something new. Write outside of your regular genre. Test out an idea you have for a plot. Introduce a character you’re considering using in a novel. Write it and see how it turns out. Maybe you’ll get a few suggestions on how you can change it up or otherwise improve it.  
            And lastly, it’s fun. I don’t recommend forsaking your work-in-progress to do these, but a small break can sometimes be helpful. Rachael is wonderful at providing prizes for participating in the challenges and winning one of them can certainly make your day.

            Drop by Rachael’s blog and say “Howdy.” (Okay, you can just say Hi.)

Writing Prod

            My apologies for not posting Friday and for giving you such an abbreviated post today. I have a deadline to meet and have been focused on finishing my WIP.

            The very first writing prompt I learned was introduced to me as a method of developing games ideas. During that workshop they also demonstrated that the real value of the designer (or writer) is not in the basic element of the idea you’re working with but in the actual execution.
            This prompt involves randomly selecting three to five words and using those as the central themes of the story. As you develop the connections between the random words the elements of your story start to emerge. The human mind is very adept at making connections so this should be no problem for any of us creative types.
            I find that nouns work best, but verbs and adjectives work as long as you keep them to a minimum. One method of randomly selecting the words is to leaf through the newspaper and take the first noun, verb, or adjective you see. You can also flip through the channels of your television of radio and just copy down whichever words that catch your attention.
            Once you have the decided upon number of words you can look them over. If a story idea doesn’t immediately jump out to you select one at a time and consider whether it represents a character, place, motive, or goal in the story. By time you get through assigning all of them their roles in the story you should have some excellent ideas of what it’s all about.

            Here are five random words that I picked by flipping through the television channels: Hunger, Mood, Price, Electronics, and Federal.

            If you want to participate, use those five words to write a small story (100-200 words) or the elevator pitch for a novel or screenplay. As usual, I am including an example of using the prompt to generate a story idea. (I had an idea brewing by the time I had written down the second word.)

Hunger Strike – Joe Carson’s dreams of a daring career in the FBI vanished on the day they assigned him to be a supply clerk in a dead end post. Now the lead investigators in the office have mysteriously eaten themselves to death and Joe is the only person with a lead on what they were investigating when it happened.