Jump Write In

Timing is everything when writing a story with suspense and intrigue. For your writing warm up today, write a memoir or poem about a childhood experience in which you felt scared and excited both at the same time. Maybe it was the first time you used a ouija board, or took your first roller coaster ride,  or walked home at night through a graveyard.  Describe in detail what the fear and awe felt like. Did you have a lump in your throat, a dry throat, lose your voice, or scream loudly? Did your body shake, or did you run as fast as you could? Embelish the suspense, keep the reader on the edge of their seat as long as you can before concluding your story. Have fun!

Until next time,

Walk in beauty, write life with passion!

Halloween is coming.  It is the night when ancient cultures believed the veil between worlds becomes thinner.  Witches and ghouls, goblins and faeries, pixies and trolls run amok in our earthly realm, performing acts of mischief and leave chaos in their wake.  Halloween is a time for you, as writers, to pass through the veil of writing deadlines and proper grammar, release your imagination, put your pen to paper and let the magic flow.  Go ahead, release your inner critic, give it a day off and then allow yourself to free-write a halloween story just for fun.  Let it be full of magic and mischief,  mayhem and madness.

For today’s writing warm up, write a Halloween short story. For those of you who may need a little help getting started, I have provided some  lead in ideas below.

1. On a restless night when the moon was full they saw____________

2. Trixie the pixie knew she needed glasses when __________________

3.  The witch threw her______________

4. The gaggle of gueese heard the faerie shouting____________

5. The reluctant troll didn’t know_____

When you are feeling at an impasse with your imagination, doodling or other forms of drawing can help get things flowing again and you don’t have to be an artist to do it.  All you need is a large pad of newsprint and some colored felt pens, pencils or other drawing utensils.  Make large circles on the paper, using your entire arm, drawing them first with your dominant hand. After a few minutes switch to your non-dominant hand, changing the color of your pen and moving your arm in the opposite direction.  Whenever a word comes to your mind, write it somewhere on the page, making sure to write at an angle, up and down, or backward, but never left to right. Don’t worry about whether the words have any kind of association with each other, just write them. Stand back and look at the circles you’ve made.  Do you see anything within your scribbles that look like something else? Use the circles as a topic and write a short story or poem.  Attempt to incorporate as many of the words written in your circles as possible.

Another method to stimulate the imaginative side of your brain is to make what I call ” A Cloud Picture Mandala.”  For this method, take a large piece of paper and draw a large circle. A pie tin, dinner plate or Frisbee makes a wonderful guide for tracing a circle. Once you have finished with this take a pen or marker and make random dots, lots of them, all over the inside of the circle.  Now connect the dots, without picking up your pen, until each one is connected to another one.  Look at the patterns you’ve created and start making pictures out of them and coloring them in. You can add more lines as needed to complete a picture but try to add as little as possible.  You can have several pictures contained within the same circle. Once finished, give it a title and write a poem or story using one or two of the images you’ve created within the circle.  Have Fun!

Until Next time,

Walk in beauty, write life with passion!

I am a big fan of sci-fi television shows.  So I thought today we’d try stimulating our imagination toward the weird and exciting adventurous other-world hero’s journey.  You become the hero, embarking on a quest of some kind, to accomplish whatever your imagination conjures up.  Here are a couple of  opening scenarios to choose from:

1.  Imagine yourself as a child, climbing a tree in the backyard.  You hear a noise below you and quickly scurry down to find out what it is.  Your best friend is standing under the tree looking disheveled and harried when you reach the ground.  Asking him or her what has happened, you both hear a noise behind you.  Turning around to face the trunk of the tree, you see a door suddenly open and light pouring through.  A hand with nine fingers appears and reaches toward you and your friend.  Curiosity gets the better of you and you both move toward the hand, which is now beckoning you closer while you hear a child’s faint whisper pleading for help coming from beyond the doorway somewhere.

What do you and your friend do next?

2. You are a ham-radio operator and decide to take advantage of your day off work to play on the radio.  It is the time of year when the biggest skips are reportedly occurring and you want to find out what the furthest distance of contact is that you can make.  As you turn the dial, and call out, you suddenly hear a high pitched screech come through, then a frantic voice speaking in a strange garbled language you don’t understand.  Suddenly you hear plainly that same voice yelling the words “STARSEED TRANSMISSION!”  What happens next? What do you find out about this strange radio signal you’re receiving and what adventure awaits you?  Have fun!

Until Next time,

Walk in beauty, write life with passion!