Get-Fit Fridays

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push-upsWriting fit, that is. Every Friday I posting a writing exercise, just something to get the creative juices flowing. If you feel it, share your results in the comments below. Or just talk about what you got out of this exercise. Post your comments by midnight the following Thursday. I’ll be sharing mine and I’d love to see yours.

Today’s exercise:

  1. Pick 5 novels. Pick your favorites, or choose at random from what’s on your shelves.
  2. Starting with the first novel in the stack, open it to a random page and pick a paragraph.
  3. Copy that paragraph, word for word.
  4. Do the same for the next four books, putting each paragraph into the same document as the previous one.
  5. Now rewrite the paragraphs so that they make one continuous narrative.  Write intervening paragraphs, if you want to.

Taking it further: repeat this exercise using books from different genre(s) than you used the first time. Or, try it with five books all from the same genre, then do it with five books from different genres. How do your two results compare? Was one way easier than the other? Or do it comparing books from one genre with books from another genre. Which one worked better? Let us know your answers in the comments section below.

For GMs:

  1. Pick 5 modules or published adventures. If you don’t have five for your game system, gather as many as you can, or pull some from other games.
  2. Open the first done to a random page (yes, you can use dice) and pick an encounter
  3. Copy that encounter, word for word
  4. Do the same for the next four modules, putting all of these encounters in one document.
  5. Assess: can you rewrite these five encounters as one mini-module? Can you insert them into your current campaign?

This is supposed to be a quick, fun exercise. You don’t have to spend a lot of time on it, certainly no more than an hour or two. If nothing comes together by then, oh well. Do the best you can. Sometimes it just won’t make sense, no matter what you do. Make as much sense as you can out of it.

Has this helped get your creative juices going? Let us know how!

[Photo by gregmcqu33n via Flickr Creative Commons]

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