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wordwhackerIt has been... SEVERAL hot minutes since I updated here, huh?
Long story short: big creative block. New year starting. Fun challenge time!
Just before the holidays I got my copy of The Story Engine deck, which is used to generate story prompts. I'm going to start the year off with a month of creative outlining and prompt building to remind myself how to come up with stories. I've never felt like a big "ideas" person, which has made creating hard when I'm working by myself. So this should be fun!
THE CHALLENGE:
Every day, I will spend 5 minutes doing a prompt card spread, and then at least 5 minutes brainstorming or starting an outline.
That's 10 minutes of creating every day. A very achievable goal, but I do want to make sure I do it EVERY DAY.
Come February I'll assess and consider if I want to do another challenge, something that focuses more on fleshing things out.
So, without further ado:
DAY ONE PROMPT:
A vindictive, trapped caretaker wants to stop the theft of a work of art - but they must accept a loss they have been in denial about. (OR they must find something they lost long ago.)
My long-hand notes: What does it mean to be a caretaker? Must we give up something of ourselves? That is the loss they must admit - the reason behind their vindictiveness. Maybe they need to remember why they became a caretaker in the first place. Not for the owners (who are above them in some way), but for the object itself.
Further thoughts: I've been mulling this around in my mind, which has been nice. I started wondering what the object could be - and it occurred to me that it might be more interesting it if was a person, not an object; a person who is powerful in one sense, but powerless in another, in that they are owned. And maybe our caretaker realizes how much of their humanity they've lost in the course of their duty. The prompt talks about stopping a theft, but now I'm considering changing that to a kidnapping or assassination attempt. Someone not in power wants to strike a blow to the people in power, and this person is a key to that power, so they want to eliminate them. Maybe our caretaker feels that the world would be better off if their charge WAS taken out. Maybe they helped enable this attempted action against their charge, believing it is for the better good; but they realize that, in spite of themselves (ironically) they actually CARE for the person they're caretaking. And they have to wrestle with whether to let them suffer for the greater good - or perhaps find another way.
Okay, that was fun. Now for today's prompt!
DAY TWO PROMPT:
A long-lost twin wants to end a family obligation to a sacrifice, but it will mean forgiving family.
I love the family vibes in this one. I immediately imagine a family that is charged with keeping an area safe, maybe a town - and part of that involves sacrificing peoplee to appease an unknowable force of some knid. Maybe it's real, maybe it's imagined - they think it's the fae, and are very superstitious of trickery or being fooled/duped. So twins are looked at as an ill omen, and they do a ritual (essentially a coin flip) to figure out which is the "fake" twin and leave it in the woods as a sacrifice. Maybe this twin was rescued by the actual fae folk who have no idea why humans sometimes do this, and could they please stop? Why didn't they want THIS one? It seems fine to us. And so they're raised by the fae and doesn't consider themself human. But there's some ACTUAL threat that the fae need the humans' help to deal with. Who better to talk to them? Of course this twin wants NOTHING to do with the people who left them for dead. Maybe it's only through getting to know their "human" twin that they figure out how to get their people working together and focus on the real problem instead of superstitions.
Two days, two prompts - so far these are both story seeds that I'd be happy following up on. I'm sure there will be a few throughout the month that lose their shine after a while, but so far I'm looking forward to doing more!
Long story short: big creative block. New year starting. Fun challenge time!
Just before the holidays I got my copy of The Story Engine deck, which is used to generate story prompts. I'm going to start the year off with a month of creative outlining and prompt building to remind myself how to come up with stories. I've never felt like a big "ideas" person, which has made creating hard when I'm working by myself. So this should be fun!
THE CHALLENGE:
Every day, I will spend 5 minutes doing a prompt card spread, and then at least 5 minutes brainstorming or starting an outline.
That's 10 minutes of creating every day. A very achievable goal, but I do want to make sure I do it EVERY DAY.
Come February I'll assess and consider if I want to do another challenge, something that focuses more on fleshing things out.
So, without further ado:
DAY ONE PROMPT:
A vindictive, trapped caretaker wants to stop the theft of a work of art - but they must accept a loss they have been in denial about. (OR they must find something they lost long ago.)
My long-hand notes: What does it mean to be a caretaker? Must we give up something of ourselves? That is the loss they must admit - the reason behind their vindictiveness. Maybe they need to remember why they became a caretaker in the first place. Not for the owners (who are above them in some way), but for the object itself.
Further thoughts: I've been mulling this around in my mind, which has been nice. I started wondering what the object could be - and it occurred to me that it might be more interesting it if was a person, not an object; a person who is powerful in one sense, but powerless in another, in that they are owned. And maybe our caretaker realizes how much of their humanity they've lost in the course of their duty. The prompt talks about stopping a theft, but now I'm considering changing that to a kidnapping or assassination attempt. Someone not in power wants to strike a blow to the people in power, and this person is a key to that power, so they want to eliminate them. Maybe our caretaker feels that the world would be better off if their charge WAS taken out. Maybe they helped enable this attempted action against their charge, believing it is for the better good; but they realize that, in spite of themselves (ironically) they actually CARE for the person they're caretaking. And they have to wrestle with whether to let them suffer for the greater good - or perhaps find another way.
Okay, that was fun. Now for today's prompt!
DAY TWO PROMPT:
A long-lost twin wants to end a family obligation to a sacrifice, but it will mean forgiving family.
I love the family vibes in this one. I immediately imagine a family that is charged with keeping an area safe, maybe a town - and part of that involves sacrificing peoplee to appease an unknowable force of some knid. Maybe it's real, maybe it's imagined - they think it's the fae, and are very superstitious of trickery or being fooled/duped. So twins are looked at as an ill omen, and they do a ritual (essentially a coin flip) to figure out which is the "fake" twin and leave it in the woods as a sacrifice. Maybe this twin was rescued by the actual fae folk who have no idea why humans sometimes do this, and could they please stop? Why didn't they want THIS one? It seems fine to us. And so they're raised by the fae and doesn't consider themself human. But there's some ACTUAL threat that the fae need the humans' help to deal with. Who better to talk to them? Of course this twin wants NOTHING to do with the people who left them for dead. Maybe it's only through getting to know their "human" twin that they figure out how to get their people working together and focus on the real problem instead of superstitions.
Two days, two prompts - so far these are both story seeds that I'd be happy following up on. I'm sure there will be a few throughout the month that lose their shine after a while, but so far I'm looking forward to doing more!
