Post by account_disabled on Dec 19, 2023 23:48:34 GMT -5
Writing exercises are always useful for improving your narrative skills and trying new solutions, having different experiences with stories and maybe being able to write something good and valid to send to a competition. Here I have selected seven ways to invent stories , some of which I myself am trying. Methods 1 and 2 are in the works, methods 3, 5 and 6 have already been tried, and methods 4 and 7 are yet to be attempted. Writing a story from a dream : Have you ever had particularly strange or adventurous dreams? I do it almost every night. Most of the time it's just mental garbage that isn't worth writing down, but a couple of dreams gave me the idea for two short stories. I then took notes, which I will develop into a story.
Writing a story based on real news : here the issue is more delicate, because you could offend and damage the pain of others. I act in this way: I take a piece of news from the last century, or the one before that, and I build a story on it, or I modify the fact a lot, so that it doesn't affect the relatives of the victims. Writing a Special Data story from the "binomial of fantasy" : as I learned from Gianni Rodari in his beautiful book The grammar of fantasy . I tried this technique for the Christmas story Children of Winter . It's about taking two elements and putting them together. And see what comes out. Write a story from a painting : look at a painting, perhaps a Caravaggio or even a Bosch, and create a story from that image. You have almost everything: the setting, the characters and the main event.
All that remains is to invent names and weave a plot. Writing a story from the end of a book : I tried it when I participated - and won - in the ULAM literary competition (one book a month) launched by Edizioni XII. I wrote the sequel to the novel The Wild Ride by Riccardo Coltri. So take a novel that particularly struck you and write a story that represents its sequel. Writing a story from a personal situation : there may be situations, both painful and grotesque, that push you to put them on paper, to write a story about them. It's a way to let off steam, to get rid of something that would otherwise remain inside. I've already written a story like this, but it doesn't matter which one. Writing a story by inserting one object/person/animal into another : this method was also suggested to me by Rodari in the same book, when he talked about having children create stories. It's a way to set the machine of imagination and creativity in motion. What happens if you put a dog in an anthill? Or a librarian in a hot air balloon? Or a diver in a desert? Or even better, a cat in a bank's cash vault?
Writing a story based on real news : here the issue is more delicate, because you could offend and damage the pain of others. I act in this way: I take a piece of news from the last century, or the one before that, and I build a story on it, or I modify the fact a lot, so that it doesn't affect the relatives of the victims. Writing a Special Data story from the "binomial of fantasy" : as I learned from Gianni Rodari in his beautiful book The grammar of fantasy . I tried this technique for the Christmas story Children of Winter . It's about taking two elements and putting them together. And see what comes out. Write a story from a painting : look at a painting, perhaps a Caravaggio or even a Bosch, and create a story from that image. You have almost everything: the setting, the characters and the main event.
All that remains is to invent names and weave a plot. Writing a story from the end of a book : I tried it when I participated - and won - in the ULAM literary competition (one book a month) launched by Edizioni XII. I wrote the sequel to the novel The Wild Ride by Riccardo Coltri. So take a novel that particularly struck you and write a story that represents its sequel. Writing a story from a personal situation : there may be situations, both painful and grotesque, that push you to put them on paper, to write a story about them. It's a way to let off steam, to get rid of something that would otherwise remain inside. I've already written a story like this, but it doesn't matter which one. Writing a story by inserting one object/person/animal into another : this method was also suggested to me by Rodari in the same book, when he talked about having children create stories. It's a way to set the machine of imagination and creativity in motion. What happens if you put a dog in an anthill? Or a librarian in a hot air balloon? Or a diver in a desert? Or even better, a cat in a bank's cash vault?