Writing Exercise no. 1

In another post, I shared about attending a talk by Jessica Bendinger, screenwriter, author, producer, director best known for Bring it On (2000). She said she took her love of cheerleading and combined that with a discussion of social inequality to get the basic idea of the script. So, I thought, maybe I could take that idea and use it to help me generate some new ideas. 

So take out a piece of paper, or write on a computer. Make two columns. In the first column write the types of people, or places you're familiar with. Such as a high school, college campus, college athletes, a hospital, an upscale coffee shop, a tarot card reader, etc. 

In the second column write down topics you have opinions about and could write about such as; income inequality, the digital age, racism, drug and alcohol abuse, parenting, trying to make a career out of [whatever you do]. Now, you can randomly pick something from column one and two. You can close your eyes and point to them, or roll dice, or write them down on scraps of paper and throw them into hats to pick. Now try to write something, a short story, a scene, an outline, with the setting/character type and topic in mind.  

So for me my list may look something like this 

                                                            Ideas Exercise 

Randomly pick one from each column and I get [drum roll] 

Homebody and trying to make friends as an adult. While I hardly have a story, I at least have an idea to think about. Maybe in a few days I'll have some kind of outline for who my homebody character is, and how they go about trying to socialize. 

Honestly, it feels more nonfiction at this point with me barely leaving the house and almost everyone I talk to being online... 

So, it shouldn't be too much of a challenge to write from that perspective...

Give it a try and see what sort of combos you get that may inspire a story out of you. 

For an extra challenge you could throw in some topics you're maybe less familiar with, and have to research. I've done some research into Medical Examiners for a crime drama script, but I don't know everything about the job. So maybe I could throw in mortician as a character and see what I can do with them in a story about homophobia. No idea where that could go, but it does get me thinking about what I could do with a story like that, and that's the idea of the exercise, get your brain thinking up ideas for potential stories you could write.