Today’s post is a continuation from last week where I shared some creative exercises that have helped me understand that when it comes to writing, and creating, you can find inspiration in the everyday ~ if you pay enough attention, stay curious, and let your imagination run wild!

When I deliver creative writing workshops I encourage participants to think of fun ways they can experiment with their writing. Often writers can put a lot of pressure on themselves, especially if working to deadlines, or expectations. It can also be daunting if you think a story should contain ‘complicated’ words or be a certain length.

I find a good way to take the pressure off, and to stop over-thinking, is to engage in writing tasks which don’t require a lot of words, and in fact make you start to look at words in a completely different way.

A challenge I took part in years ago, (just for fun, with friends), was to try and write stories composed of only three letter words (which then extended out to write stories with four letter words, five letter words – you get the idea!).

I amazed myself with being able to write not one, but quite a few, very short stories composed of three letter words. I’m sharing one of them below, which turned into a bit of a philosophical story.

3 Letter Word Story Example

Pat Woo and the Sun

One day Pat Woo saw the sun dip and tip out the sky. 
”Wow! See the sun!”

Pat Woo saw the sun run and Pat ran too. The sun set off for the day. One sun ray hit the ill cow. Pat saw the cow fly – set out for the sky. 

“Moo! Pat Woo! The cow can fly!”

Pat Woo saw the sun run and dip. Its ray hit the old rat. The old rat was lit. The rat got fit – saw the sky; his old eye now new. The rat saw the sun; saw Pat Woo.

“Pat Woo! The rat can see!”

One ray hit the cod. Pat Woo saw its fin dip; saw the cod nod and the cod got out the sea net.

“Pat Woo! The cod will not die!”
”Hot sun you are ace.” Pat Woo had joy for the sun. 

The sun had fun. Pat Woo did too – the day Pat Woo saw the sun dip and tip out the sky.

Why don’t you give this a go yourself? If you’re part of a creative writing group, it might a fun warm-up task to try to wake up the creative side of your brain.

As an extension of last week’s ‘Small Stones’ exercise, I’m going to challenge you to keep a more general ‘observation diary’. This can take the form of visual notes such as photographs, or scribbles (or notes in your phone), of interesting things you notice during your day-to-day. The Small Stones were quite creative paragraphs or lines, but in an observation diary you might want to capture musings and reflections on things in the news, things you overhear etc, anything really which you think one day could form part of a story.

Take a Photograph a Day

I’m a very visual writer and I love taking photographs. You can start to build a ‘photographic’ observation diary by taking at least one interesting photograph every day. This could be anything which catches your attention; an abandoned shoe lying at the side of the road, an interesting sculpture you walk past every day, a strange doll in the window of a shop… You can start thinking about the story behind the image there and then, but often it might take a while for a proper idea to form. And that’s fine. Because now you’ve stored the photograph somewhere on your phone, you can return to this later. You might even want to combine the small stones tasks (see the post here for examples), with your photographs.

I’ve shared some photographs above I took when on various trips across the years, which I then later turned into short stories.

The heart photograph was a print which hung in the staircase of a Paris hotel I stayed in during my first solo trip abroad. I spent three nights in Paris and enjoyed wandering the streets alone, and it was during this time, passing by this print every day, I started to form the idea for a short story ‘Only You’ where a jilted bride spends her honeymoon alone in Paris. The story was runner-up in a competition, and broadcast on Hospital Radio. They sent me a CD recording of an actor reading it aloud, which was quite special. I loved hearing my words come to life.

If you enjoy finding inspiration from photographs check out the Scottish Book Trust 50 word story competition here They provide monthly photographic prompts

Listen to conversations

When I say listen to conversations, I mean within reason, as obviously it’s a bit rude to invade others’ privacy. But if you’re on a train or bus where your fellow passengers insist on talking loudly to one another (or on their phone), then naturally you will probably pick up interesting snippets of conversations throughout your day.

In an old ‘observation diary’ (where I used to write down thoughts that randomly popped into my head, interesting facts or stories I came across on social media or in the news, as well as overheard conversations) I found these snippets:

A man and a woman in conversation: “Tommy, you’re being really unfair. You’re stopping me from going to Hollywood. You’re being really bad to me with the brain transplant thing. I know I’ve had at least four brain transplants behind my back.” On the surface, most passengers would dismiss this woman as talking nonsense. But what if the man she is with is a mad scientist, and she’s the subject of numerous experiments, and is starting to rebel?

A teenage girl was sitting behind me on one train journey, talking loudly into her phone, “She fell out with me when I was camping because she said I never texted, but I couldn’t text because seriously I didn’t have reception… and then I ended up sitting with her all night on a night out so she never felt left out… I hate falling out with people, the thought of someone hating me, or having a problem with me…” At this point a boy nearby asks me if I’ve got a pen. He then returns to his seat to scribble something on a bit of paper and when he gets up at his stop he chucks a note at the girl before walking off.

The girl then shrieks into her phone, telling the person on the other end, “Oh my f-ing God. A guy just threw a note at me on the way off his train. Wait, wait. His name is Ryan. I swear… wait… he must have been listening to my conversation. How rude, haha.” (Newsflash girl, I think we’re all now listening)… “He’s said, You are too beautiful to have friends who are mean to you. Add me to facebook and let me make you smile.”

Now depending how your writer brain works, this could either be the start of a romantic novel or a true-crime type stalker thriller….

Next time I’ll be writing more about the inspiration behind my books.

Happy writing!