Time To Loosen Up – NaNoWriMo Is Just Around The Corner

When I was in art school, one of the first exercises we did in Life Drawing was quick sketches of the model in action poses, running, throwing a ball, etc. They had a three minute time limit and the model would take a different pose. The purpose of this was two-fold. First, it got the class past the fact that the model was nude to focusing on how to draw the figure. Second, it forced us to get the basic lines of the figure down quickly with no detail at all. That was especially hard for many of us who were way too detail oriented. Doing this exercise had a great impact on my drawing. I loosened up. The pencil flowed over the paper. Minutiae were unimportant. We also got a crash course in how the muscles and joints shifted in movement (the reason for the lack of clothing).

Sometimes our writing also needs some loosening up so the words and ideas will flow. Way back when I was involved with a large writers group that had an active chat room, sometimes a person would throw out a writing prompt and see what we could do with it. This was actively online and had a time limit and/or word count. The prompts were simple, mere dry tinder to kindle a fire from. One I remember was “flashing blue lights”. Now, those blue lights became everything from invading aliens, to cops responding to a robbery, to an alternate world gate. I think one person wrote about a young rock band working on a light show. The possibilities are endless.

There are different approaches to this. You can build a scene, like a photograph, capturing an instant in time. You can also use it to start a foundation for a compelling story line. What does the prompt make you think of? Write it down. Fast. Let your fingers do the thinking.

There are rules to this game:

1. Grammar doesn’t matter.

2. Spelling doesn’t matter.

3. Knowing where the scene/story may be going doesn’t even matter.

All those can come later, if you want them to. The only purpose is to stir your imagination and at the same time, write with bold strokes in a very short time. No more than an hour, 30 minutes would be better.  Even 15 minutes. The faster you work, the more you will throw off the conventions and thought of extraneous detail. If you have other writers you chat with regularly, or a group that meets in person, it’s a lot of fun as well. We used to have a word count goal involved, 300 words in the time limit, or sometimes the first person to write 300 words using the prompt. Sometimes, it was only 50 words.

Here are a few prompt ideas, though they can be anything at all.

screeching

loose line/rope tossing in the wind

….fills with water

stepped off the bus and …

a flower on the …

the next three words you hear

See a picture or ask yourself who/what/where/why.

Go on and try, it will be fun.  Ready. Set. WRITE!