Increase Creativity with Random Elements
By Kathryn Craft | October 7, 2015 |
Our guest today is Kathryn Craft, the author of two novels from Sourcebooks: The Art of Falling and The Far End of Happy. Her work as a freelance developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com follows a nineteen-year career as a dance critic. Long a leader in the southeastern Pennsylvania writing scene, she hosts lakeside writing retreats for women in northern New York State, leads writing workshops, and is a member of the Tall Poppy Writers.
After publishing two novels in two years, it may look like novel ideas spring forth like mint in my garden. They don’t. For one thing, both of those novels were the result of many years of thought and development. Secondly, my homeowner’s association doesn’t even approve of rapidly spreading plants. As I fumbled through seed packets looking for a way to grow my next novel, I wrote this post to remind myself of what worked for me in the past.”
Connect with Kathryn on her blog, on Facebook, and on Twitter.
Increase Creativity with Random Elements
A car mechanic, a midwife, and a 13-year-old Girl Scout walk into a bar…
No, really. What are they doing there? Did they arrive together, and if so, why? If they met in the bar, why did they interact? What if they all spoke different languages? What if, while wrapped in their own concerns, each of them had been powerfully drawn to this place—what might each of them say or reveal?
[pullquote]Three unrelated elements created the alchemy that spawned both of my published novels.[/pullquote]
Such jokes always include a setting, a situation, and three disparate people whose reactions allow for just enough repetition to set up the final punch line. But tossing together similar random ingredients can also create fertile soil from which to grow a novel.
Three unrelated elements created the alchemy that spawned both of my published novels.
The Art of Falling was inspired by two situations and a trend:
- A news article I read of a woman who walked away from a 14-story fall with only a broken arm
- An anecdote I heard about a man with a never-say-die spirit whose body was failing from heart disease, and whose hospital roommate was a young man with a flagging spirit whose body would not succumb when he put his head in the oven, blinding him instead
- Our society’s obsession with the body beautiful.
The Far End of Happy took shape from a memory, a novel structure, and a complicated relationship:
- The true-life bones of my first husband’s suicide standoff
- An idea to write a novel in a 12-hour structure
- Thinking about how hard it would be for lifelong friends to protect their relationship when their children were divorcing each other.
For each novel, I put these three starter notions in the mental pot and let them stew, where seemingly on their own they sparked the kind of creative leaps necessary to integrate them into a story. Of course I added much more over time, as I defined my premise and fleshed out my characters. But to start a new story, I look for three things.
According to Katherine Ramsland in her book Snap!: Seizing your Aha! Moments, adding disparate elements to your brain stew allows both halves of your brain—the right side that seeks metaphor, nuance, and emotion, and the left side that analyzes and seeks patterns—to contribute to the creative process. I love her description of that eureka moment as “the magical link between impasse and enlightenment.” As if a timer has rung, the stew is done and you simply must start writing.
How is the scent of honeysuckle like a sunrise?
Random elements encourage mental agility through a sense of play. By giving us something new to chew on, unexpected pairings pull us from our self-conscious attempt to “create something new” and embroil us in the playful-yet-workmanlike state of seeking relationships between the known (our memories, knowledge, and typical ways of thinking) and the unknown (this random element and a new story).
People who take my “Healing Through Writing” workshops want to come to terms with traumatic pasts that might include anything from tragic loss to sexual abuse to addiction. Yet on-the-spot writing can seize the pen of many a seasoned pro, let alone those on the verge of unlocking an emotional tsunami. To get them writing, I offer the gift of a random element.
Each participant draws from a jar a phrase that evokes conflict all on its own, and they must use it in writing about their situation. Their brains arc from “broken camera” or “thin ice” to their personal experience, seeking metaphor and patterns and meaning—and in moments they are writing.
Over to you. Anyone ready to give one of these techniques a spin?
- Random story starter. A car mechanic, a midwife, and a 13-year-old Girl Scout walk into a bar. Tell us more about them and why they inhabit the same story world.
- Random setting. Would the plot of your work-in-progress allow a scene in a wildly different setting that would challenge your character? If so, give it a try and see if you find out something new about her.
- Random character. Scan a newspaper until you find an interesting character, drop him into your WIP, and stir. Anything interesting happen?
- Random word. This is author and writing guru James Scott Bell’s favorite. It works great if you’re stuck in the middle of a story. Close your eyes, open the dictionary, and point at a random word. Use it in your next sentence and see where that takes you.
- Random conflict phrase. When writing about dangerously charged personal memories, try adding in something similar to the following:
- broken camera
- red tugboat
- thin ice
- shattered glass
- grandmother’s house
- discarded newspaper
Feel free to report back on how it goes in the comments. If you use other random element techniques in your writing, please share!
Kathryn Craft (she/her) is the author of two novels from Sourcebooks, The Art of Falling and The Far End of Happy. Her forthcoming book, Crafting Story Movement: Techniques to Engage Readers and Drive Your Novel Forward, draws from decades of experience as both a story consultant and a movement specialist/dance critic. Learn more on Kathryn’s website.
Love this, Kathryn. Will copy and file away for when I start my next novel (assuming I ever finish the WIP). Thanks for sharing.
You’re welcome and thanks for stopping by, Sandy!
“…the playful yet workmanlike state of seeking relationships between the known and the unknown…” How delicious. I love what you say about letting random elements ‘stew’, and how both sides of the brain go to work on finding the threads that connect those elements. I’ve finally begun to trust that process, which I find fascinating and sometimes even miraculous. Learning to give it the time it needs to happen has always been the challenger for me. Thanks so much for this, Katherine. I’m going to have fun playing with the techniques you offered here.
Enjoy, Susan! Trusting. Having faith. People speak of the challenges of publishing—creating a great story, supported by solid word craft, creating a platform, marketing, juggling tasks, paying the bills—but I think the greatest challenge is keeping the faith.
Kathryn-
My WIP is about a high-end furniture artist on a walk across Pennsylvania. Such men know wood. They look at trees differently than the rest of us. I needed a scene in which we discovered how he looks at a forest. That’s all I had.
So what random elements can one pull into a scene like this? Things one would actually find nearby came in handy. A stretch of old growth forest. A 200 year old hickory tree. The farmer who owned it.
Fine, but I needed conflict. My protagonist decided to buy the tree, the farmer refused to sell it thinking this furniture maker would cut it down. Now, I needed a turning. My protagonist reveals that he doesn’t want to cut it down but to deed it to live out its natural life, a probably futile bargain with God to let the love of his life (who is dying) live. The farmer proves to be a church deacon who helps him find a measure of peace.
This scene that started with nothing and simply picked up pieces from the ground turned into a favorite scene for some early readers. For me too. I like what you say, Kathryn. Pick up random pieces. They’ll take you to good places.
That’s great, Benjamin! Now let’s say you wrote that scene but still couldn’t find its emotional power. What if you went even more random, such as a plastic toy in the forest? Or a broken plate? Or a plow blade? The farther afield you go, the more you can jar your brain from the rut of expectation.
There you go. Next time I’m stuck I’ll sift through the garbage that litters our American roadsides, overpasses, lots and woods. There’s gold there, for sure.
And hey, call me Ben.
Ben it is. ☺️
I love your story’s premise Ben!
This really came at a good time…I feel a little stuck on my current WIP, and I think I’ll try the random character idea to see what it sparks. Love this post! Such helpful creativity ideas.
Choose someone wild and quirky who has a different take on your premise. S/he will shake things up and you’ll have a lot of fun doing it!
Delicious ideas, Kathryn. As a WIP grows, the evocative elements you mention can give rise to scenes and even full-blown characters–and they might carry more weight in the flow of the story than you originally thought. It’s fascinating how the thread of an idea begins to create a solid part of the novel. Thanks for these tips to help further the process.
I agree, Beth! The mysteries of the creative process seduce us over and over, don’t they?
Love this, especially the random conflict phrase. What images evoke! This goes in my keeper file. Thanks.
Thanks Bernadette!
Kathryn, I’m late to the Random Acts of Creativity party, but the balloons are still here, so … This is delightful stuff, and so true in how the brain likes to grapple with odd angles or perceptions (and be gratified when the grappling’s good).
I was at a recent writer’s conference where we were given lists of stray words and asked to write a quick story using a clump of them. It was good fun, and quite interesting to see how agile your mind can be in combining odd things into a tale. Thanks!
That sounds like fun—thanks, Tom! I’ve done another exercise where you pull ten words or short phrases from a page span within a book not in your genre, and create a story using them all. That’s fun, too!
Love the idea of random elements. It will give it a try.
Have fun with it, Maryann!
Hey, Kathryn, nice to see you again. Your post is right on. And thanks for the mention.
You’re welcome Jim, and thanks for the tip!
Great post!
I love using random elements in my writing. I’ve learned some great exercises from Lynda Barry’s book “What It Is” and I have a personal one which I started using many years ago with the help of blog readers.
My exercise involves asking all my readers to pick the nearest book to them and choose a sentence randomly. Once I collect all the sentences, I pull out any names that might be mentioned – they will be the characters in my story. I then place the sentences in a hat and pick them out one by one, randomly, and that’s how they must appear in my story – I have to write connecting one to the next.
The first draft is always very strange, as it veers between narrative voices and has these odd sentences sticking out from them. But when I let the draft sit for some time and return to it later, I always find something interesting to edit and rework. This exercise hasn’t failed me yet!
That sounds like a lot of fun, Ollie. Thanks for sharing this exercise!
Fantastic post, Kathryn! In addition to some great advice, I also loved finding out about the secret ingredients that went into each of your (fantastic) novels. I’m definitely going to try some of these ideas. I am a little concerned, and quite curious, about that Girl Scout in a bar…
Haha. Maybe it’s a juice bar!
I love this post! We all need a dash (or a bucket load) of whimsy to get out of ruts and ditches. Things that have worked for me: killing or removing secondary characters (character-jenga), or switching characters’ gender; getting into details like how they would drink their tea; trying to imagine what they have in their pockets. It makes writing fun and avoids the wheel-spinning of writer’s block.
Sounds like you have a great attitude, Jillian. Writing is hard enough—we might as well try to make it fun as well!