Friday, December 12, 2008

Free Stuff Friday: Writer's Block

One of the methods I use to fight writer's block (or just plain lack of writing ideas), is to steal from my experience as a drama coach. Yeah, in addition to teaching high school English, I coach competitive speech and drama. I'm that big of a geek.

Anyway...one of the most popular events is improvised duet acting (IDA). In this event, a pair draws three characters, three situations, and three settings. They then choose two characters, one situation, and one setting, and plan/deliver a four to seven minute scene. You can see where this is going...

Sometimes, when I'm really "blocked", I draw. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't.

Today's freebie: a list of 300+ character types (download the PDF). The IDA rules dictate no characters under trademark or copyright. Most of the characters on the list are general types, but if you cut 'em up and draw randomly, you can land some fun combos. Let your writer's-blocked brain sort that out.

4 comments:

Jamie Eyberg said...

My school didn't have anything fun like that. At least if they did they didn't ask me to be included.

Cate Gardner said...

Oh we had one lesson of Drama in school and it was never repeated. The teacher said I was very good at fear. If they had continued with the lessons I could have been a B movie actress covered in tomato juice and not a writer.

K.C. Shaw said...

Cool exercise! I can't definitely see how it could lead to a short story, very easily.

Okay, I have to try it now. I need to write some short stories.

Fox Lee said...

I look up random pictures online. The beautiful ones are the most inspiring, oddly enough.