Writing Exercises

As all writers will know there are times when the mind just goes blank and words don't seem to flow. When it happens in the middle of a story I'm usually tempted to write on and them come back later and fix it- but sometimes this doesn't work as I prefer not to plan ahead too much, I'd rather let the characters and story lead me forward. When things aren't going well, writing on like this can kill a story. So, many times instead I'll either try another story- I have a big file of ideas and part-completed works- or else try a writing exercise.

Writing exercises come in various shapes or forms and you can easily Google up sites with dozens of them. Some don't appeal at all to me- write a personal ad, that sort of stuff. No, I'd much rather do one of the following:

1. Take a picture and write a plot/story around it. One of the reasons I have a big collection of jpegs on my PC. One variation around this that I'll do is to pick a picture of a gun and create a character/situation from it.
2. Grab a book off your shelf and take the first line or even paragraph and then start writing your own story to follow on.
3. Take a movie that you liked but which was flawed and do a re-write to fix the mistakes or take it in a different direction. Too many examples to list!

A new technique I've just discovered involves a book that a friend very generously gave to me at the weekend- Radio Times Guide to Science Fiction. It has a long list of obscure movies and serials in it with capsule descriptions of the plot- a team of deep space explorers discover a crazed killer amongst their number, for example- and I'm using those threadbare descriptions as jumping off points for my own stories. Very, very useful for those slow days when nothing seems to be going right.