Results of an Experiment in Structured Creative Writing

So here I was looking blankly at my monitor wondering why I didn't have any coffee close at hand and what do I espy? One of those structured creative writing exercise thingys. This one was over at Burning Zeppelin Experience. (A nice blog by the way)

A Creative Prompt. Yeah. I can deal with that. So I did.

This was the result:

It was in the midst of a daemonical plague. A wretched, feverish pollution that brought about hundreds of freakish mis-births that wriggled and squirmed out from the victim's flesh irregardless of their gender or anatomy or even whether they still lived. Writhing, tumorous things formed horribly deformed pustule-sacs that reared outwards from any and every bit of flesh exposed to the fetid miasma that wafted sullenly from the sewers. They tried to close-off the sewers. Then they tried to close off the lower districts.



It didn't do any good.


Nothing could stop the hellishly infectious plague. It was a devilish pox of fertility.


Fetility run amok.


That is why the people flocked to the once proscribed and interdicted shrine of The Barren One, to seek some consolation and comfort from the Mother of Desolation, She of the Sterile Womb, the patient Empress of Wastelands.


And she smiled.


Crookedly. Cruelly. For She had finally won after many, many long hard years...

This little off-hand exercise just delivered the raw text for our opening bit of fluff-fiction for our second Adventure...and we've gained yet another deity to detail for the A-to-Z Challenge.

Have you given this sort of thing a shot? What were your results?

We might have to try a few more of these. Does anyone have some to recommend?

Thanks to Porky for starting this most recent Microfiction/Flashfiction experiment, at least for us.
And Thanks to Jennie over at Nine Worlds Ten Thousand Things for the continuation of the Expanders! microfiction challenge that started over at Porky's Expanse. You can find several other creative writing thingys over at Jennie's blog, so if this sort of thing appeals to you, go and check it out by all means. The Jarpha have been having a wonderful time over there...
 
You might also consider naming and statting-up the lonely little monster over at our Name The Monster post at Netherwerks, or maybe you'd prefer to stat-up sea creatures over at the Rended Press blog.

Burning Zeppelin Experience: Creative Prompt, Take II

How about a Creative Prompt to get the writing going?
Here's one that is all but certain to appeal to gamers:
"Tell me the story of a world in which a god associated with a generally malevolent phenomenon is viewed as a benevolent force..."
From: Burning Zeppelin Experience: Creative Prompt, Take II

Synchronicity

Carl Jung's concept of Synchronicity as a relationship between ideas/concepts

Synchronicity is a fascinating concept that C. G. Jung gave a lot of consideration to, and Arthur Koestler did a lot of development in regards to. So have quite a few others who've followed after these intellectual titans.

In a nutshell, Synchronicity is all about a sort of quantum mechanics-like spooky action at a distance sort of process that takes place within/among human minds/consciousness whereby ideas and concepts can manifest simultaneously in multiple places at once. Consider the invention of radio and whether it was Edison or Marconi or whomever who really got there first. Some ideas are so powerful and dynamic in their own right that they are going to happen with or without the cooperation of those who are attuned to them or supposedly acting as a receiver or channel for them. Concepts, ideas, these abstract things that come into manifest expression via human agency might have a will, even a form of consciousness of their own--they might well be players in their own right, and not just sterile commodities or passive psychological resources.

Ideas may have their own ideas. Ideology might well function within an abstract ecology that we have yet to really fathom, let alone appreciate or begin to effectively explore and exploit meaningfully.

Can Synchronicity be harnessed to serve as a strange new form of technology? Can we initiate a dialogue with the abstract forces that impose ideas upon our minds and perhaps enter into a more effective, more mutually beneficial sort of collaboration with these things instead of relying on the stone age level of hoping for inspiration, courting Muses and madness? Can creativity become a factual, quantifiable science? Should it?

Intriguing territory for speculation, don't you think?

13 Commandments for Writing Suckitudinous Fiction

The one and only Holly Lisle has an incredible article on How To Write Suckitudinous Fiction. It made me laugh. It made me wince. It has given me a lot to think about as I continue to hone my skills and work away on fiction that hopefully doesn't suck. This is definitely one for the Writing Resources folder...

Creativity Crisis

Lord of the Green Dragons has a post called "Lessons to be Learned."  It is essentially a link to an article at Newsweek titled The Creativity Crisis which you can find here.

Quote:
"In middle childhood, kids sometimes create paracosms—fantasies of entire alternative worlds. Kids revisit their paracosms repeatedly, sometimes for months, and even create languages spoken there. This type of play peaks at age 9 or 10, and it’s a very strong sign of future creativity. A Michigan State University study of MacArthur “genius award” winners found a remarkably high rate of paracosm creation in their childhoods."

Paracosm.  Cool name.  I was always curious why more of my so-called peers and school-mates didn't have their own worlds.  For a while I thought it was just another after-effect of my having been through so many bouts of hellish pneumonia, intense fevers, drowning in my own lungs, even the N.D.E.s which we didn't call that back then.  But deep down, I've always held out hope that other folks likewise had their own invented worlds...I was so happy and relieved when I discovered Tolkein and when Tim introduced me to OD&D in Junior High.  That made a real difference to me.

Quote:
"From fourth grade on, creativity no longer occurs in a vacuum; researching and studying become an integral part of coming up with useful solutions. But this transition isn’t easy. As school stuffs more complex information into their heads, kids get overloaded, and creativity suffers. When creative children have a supportive teacher—someone tolerant of unconventional answers, occasional disruptions, or detours of curiosity—they tend to excel. When they don’t, they tend to underperform and drop out of high school or don’t finish college at high rates."

No Shit.  One sympathetic and supportive teacher can really make a big difference.  But even with three supportive teachers on your side, all it takes is one jerk to derail a young person who is vulnerable, incredibly vulnerable during their formative years.  It can be hard enough to fight your way up from a hateful, evil family situation that isn't any of your fault without some sanctimonious self-righteous jerkwad to screw thigns up.

Quote:
"They’re quitting because they’re discouraged and bored, not because they’re dark, depressed, anxious, or neurotic. It’s a myth that creative people have these traits. (Those traits actually shut down creativity; they make people less open to experience and less interested in novelty.) Rather, creative people, for the most part, exhibit active moods and positive affect. They’re not particularly happy—contentment is a kind of complacency creative people rarely have. But they’re engaged, motivated, and open to the world."

There is no contentment for artists.  That is an antithetical value that is flasely projected upon and indoctrinated into young people as though somehow 'Everyone' needs to be content.  Bullshit.  Only sheep need to be uniformly content.  Not artists.  We don't need contentment because we have art, passion and drive--those messy, organic things that scare the conformists, frighten the would-be arbiters of taste and confound the rules-makers trying to tell everyone else what they can't do.  (Good rules are open-ended guidelines that enable and empower, not extensive and arbitrary restrictions on what you can't do.)
 
Read this article.  It might help you understand how screwed-over some of your friends have been up to now and maybe we can do something about not screwing-up the generations coming up now.  That'd be cool.  Kids encouraged to get fully engaged with their imaginations and to run like hell with whatever the Muse hands them.  Can you imagine it?  How many new Tekumels might we finally see then?  What totally new and so-far unnamed and unthought of stuff might become available with just a few kind words, some encouragement and understanding?  If there's a crisis in terms of creativity, it's that there simply isn't enough of it and our current culture is stifling and hampers the free expression of real creativity as monolithic market interests choose to instead peddle corporatized sanitized conformist-script pablum instead.  Reject the mediocre.  Create.  Find that world we all are given early-on and bring it back.  We need it.  Now more than ever.