Unleashing Our Creativity

Several times our creativity gets stuck in  a rut as we work long and hard for several hours in a day,  for months together and sometimes for  years on one WIP. Our thoughts get stilted. They seldom drift from plot, character, conflict and resolution. This leads to battle fatigue. Yes, we do  get tired and the flow of creativity is restricted.

We may call it Writer’s Block or by any other name. I noticed while teaching my students that they were moving along just one track. The group of 18-19 year old girls seldom strayed from the path of love stories. Most were getting stuck in a rut.

To infuse fresh  enthusiasm I introduced them to the Double Trouble Game which I  had come across on my blogging friend Australian Writer Sheryl Gwyther’s blog long time back. Sheryl  generously allowed me to share this creative game  not just with  my students but with everyone. I would like to share the game with everyone. 

                   

 In this game we have to pick two nouns from a list of unlikely 'room-mates' - naming words that do not go together. 

Like:

GRASSHOPPER  CHOCOLATE

GOLDFISH  COKE

FROG  GUITAR

MAN  LEAF

BEE  PENCIL

You get the idea? Now imagine the combination of two (Frog and Guitar) and ask yourself What if ? Or you can think of unusual situations  consisting of a frog and a guitar.

Like: What if a frog  loved the guitar? What if the frog lived inside a guitar? Or what if a  frog  liked to play a guitar to serenade his girlfriend? What happens  when the frog is rejected by other frogs  because of his love for guitars?

How will our   Frog  ( my frog is called  Freddy Strings) cope with this rejection from  other frogs? Can he live away from the frog community? What  is he going to do? Would he stop playing the guitar? Would he stop living inside the guitar and move to another place? Short  stories can be built on these unlikely room mates.

My brief to my students was “ Go wild. Have fun. Let nothing hold you back.” And fun they had. I got such unlikely roommates (Cindrella- McDonald, Dog-Rose, Icecream-Sun, Plant-Coke, A popular Actress-Chocolate, Ant-Skateboard ). The stories built around these strange roomies were wild, wacky and weird. But it did let loose their creativity.  

I think this is a wonderful way to create unusual situations  in our manuscripts. We  can take two unlikely room mates ( elements from our WIP) and come up with something unusual. Maybe we can arrive at an unexpected  and unusual plot twist. Who knows  which direction our imagination will lead us to?

What do you think of the Double Trouble Game? It would be great  if  you  share two unlikely room mates with us. What is their unusual problem/situation?  Don’t you think this can be a wonderful source of inspiration not just for picture book writers, but for all of us?

P.S: My unlikely  room mates were the frog and guitar.