The Idea Machine, Part I
After much pondering about how to make characters more interesting and multi-faceted, I came up with a brainstorming exercise that I tried out with my daughter Kristen today. Whether it will generate any stories remains to be seen, but I can tell you this much: It was fun. We giggled like fiends.
The preparations:
- First, we cut sheets of paper into slips just big enough for a single phrase or sentence.
- Next, we divided the slips into two piles.
- On our first pile, being careful not to show one another our work, we wrote character roles: demon, archer, duck, shopkeeper.
- On our second pile, we wrote descriptive terms: guilty, depressed, cute, unreliable.
- Finally, we drew one or two slips at random from each pile and wrote down the results.
The resulting list (with our favorites shown in bold):
- crazy shopkeeper
- sniffly snake
- overworked dancer friend
- bulbous angel
- fuzzy baby thief
- unreliable melodramatic horse
- cute obese sissy
- hypochondriac witch
- guilty widower
- smiley orphan baker
- bubbly gossiping cook
- glow-in-the-dark ghost archer
- prim gardener
- whiny annoying dog
- teenaged jester
- panicky bankrobber
- pesty alien slave
- depressed demon
- dead miracle-worker
- genius duck
- brave jealous acrobat
- mechanical dressmaker knight
- elongated grandfather
- psychic purple shoepolisher
- indebted liar painter
Some of these duds and others are a bit too surreal. But a couple of them...there's a spark there. I think that hypochrondriac witch has a story; I can already imagine the misadventures of the panicky bankrobber. And boy do I wonder about that depressed demon.
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