In a valiant attempt to focus on nano this year, I decided to chronicle my journey creating a short humorous story as a series of blog posts I could schedule over November. This was inspired from a Community Ed class on short stories.
One of the exercises from this class was to start with a character. So create a character, adjective or job, and give them a want.
Here’s what I drafted in class:
- Undead Soccer Player in the middle of Hell must find his head to play soccer.
- A water dragon must go into a volcano to retrieve a lost crown or the worlds water will freeze.
- A squid prince must find a way to communicate with a color blind human to rescue his family.
- A paramedic answers a call, but finds a den of hungry vampires looking for a snack.
- A cowboy is brought forward in time to help herd man eating horses terrorizing a town.
- An eccentric botanist must save the last patch of super-food plant to prevent world starvation.
The goal is to take one of these ideas or anything they spawn and draft a short story. I had a week to come up with the first draft.
If they resonant with you, help yourself. We would never write the same story anyway. If you do use one, let me know how it turns out.
How do you get your ideas?
They drift in uninvited like friendly dogs who just want to play, but I don’t always have time or ambition to throw the stick.
They hang out for a while and some leave and some don’t, and I just write the idea out in my head as a fun mind-movie for all of the interminable moments life has to offer.