Hi everyone! I have a writing exercise I’m going to try out. I’m curious to see how it works, and I’ll need your help to do it. Don’t worry, no heavy lifting or paperwork required. All I need from each and every one of you is a trigger. Now you’re probably wondering what the heck I’m going on about. Well, a trigger, in this context, is a word or phrase that is used to try to create a story from. Once I have a trigger, I’ll try to use that to root a story idea in it, and will let the story grow from there. The story does not have to contain the word, nor does the connection to the word have to be obvious. The goal is get the creative flow going and end up with something in the end. So what I need from you are the trigger words. You can leave a comment here. I intend to use each and every one of them to create a story–the time frame for doing this is uncertain since I’m not sure how big of a response to expect from this, and I do have other writing projects as well as Real Life going on in parallel. So please, drop a message here with a trigger. Please keep it clean to some extent.
Where did the idea for this come to mind? Two places:
1. I first came across this idea at Liberty Hall Writer’s Forum, where they hold a weekly flash fiction challenge. Once you log in to see the trigger, you have just 90 minutes to write a complete story and submit it so you can view others’ stories and vote on your favorite. It’s a great way to get a story going when you’re having trouble getting the start. I encourage you to stop by and give it a try.
2. I lovingly stole the idea for taking triggers from a group of friends from an interview with writer Greg Van Eekhout who has tried this before. It sounded like fun, so here goes. Thanks Greg!