(Originally published Feb 18, 2020)
Today’s blog post is going to be a bit different.
Usually I talk about my experiences writing or bemoan the fact that I always seem to go through a ton of ideas before settling down, but not today, my friends, not today.
(Vaguely interested yet?)
What I wanted to do today was find a writing challenge and see what kind of craziness I could come up with, and then post it here in case anyone else wanted to join in.
Xenomorphs versus Klingons?
Yoda versus Dumbledore?
Zelda versus Link?
All of these were entertaining thoughts, but then I realized that I’d missed a step.
Before I could write about something, I needed to find a challenge to guide me in how to write it.
Challenges tended to go from the mundane to the complicated (according to the not-very-in-depth online search I’d hastily done this afternoon).
Dubious challenges were things like ‘write for ten minutes straight’ (which is something I frequently do when I have inspiration) or ‘write in a different genre’ (which is basically my life) or ‘edit someone else’s work’ (which is been-there-done-that).
Everything I came across wasn’t quite what I was looking for.
Fun was what I wanted – I wanted a challenge that would be odd and intriguing.
(Guess I could have searched for ‘wacky writing challenges’, but hindsight’s twenty-twenty, eh?)
Honestly, I also wanted something that wouldn’t take too much time, since I have a deadline to meet and dishes to wash.
I eventually came across a post about The Alphabet Challenge.
(Just as I was wondering if I should give up, actually.
Kinda great timing, huh?)
Looking at it, it seemed to be the kind of thing I was searching for – interesting, but not too complicated, and hopefully something that could be done in less than an hour.
Mainly, it consisted of picking a letter from the alphabet and writing a story that consisted of twenty-six sentences, the first of which began with that specific letter, and the rest of which began with the following letters.
Not that hard to accomplish, right?
Of course, there aren’t any limitations on what the story should be about, so that’s left up to you and your imagination.
Perhaps you could pick a random occupation and place and start there, or maybe you could use a world and characters that you’ve created and throw that into a scene, or you could take one of those suggestions from earlier in the post.
Quitting because you can’t think of what to write is against the purpose of this exercise, and don’t give up if you can’t think of a word that starts with a certain letter – just try being creative with how you start sentences.
Ready to give it a shot?
Select the letter you want to begin with and let’s go!