In this blog series, The Inkwell, award-winning author Vanessa Gebbie shares writing tips and exercises to keep your writing mind in motion during lockdown.
Our writing game today comes with thanks to poet Pascale Petit, who used this amazing game in a workshop. It helps us create extraordinary images and ideas for ordinary things.
First, make a list of ordinary things.
Eg: here’s my list:
Map
Mother
Mirror
Fish
Window
Bee
Using strips of paper for each word, write as follows – leaving plenty of room on each strip to write
A map is ….
A mother is…
A mirror is…
A fish is…
Now complete each sentence, in the most interesting original way you can, leaving a gap after ‘is’
Eg:
A map is the key to understanding where you are going
A mother is a woman, a refuge from trouble, a voice in the night.
A mirror is something reality can’t escape
A fish is fleetingly seen when the light is right
Done that? Great. Now, tear each piece of paper after ‘is’ and mix them up. See what you’ve got.
I’ve got:
A map is something reality can’t escape
A mother is fleetingly seen when the light is right
A mirror is a woman, a refuge, a voice in the night
A fish is is the key to understanding where you are going
Do your new definitions work? Do they suggest characters? Storylines? Poems?
Have fun! This game is even better played with a few of you…
Vanessa Gebbie is a novelist, short fiction writer, poet, editor and writing tutor with ten books out there somewhere – including Short Circuit, Guide to the Art of the Short Story (Salt), editions i and ii, for which she was commissioning and contributing editor. She has taught for The Arvon Foundation, The Arts Council, London’s Spread the Word, The Word Factory, Curtis Brown Creative and New Writing South among others. She is self-isolating in Sussex.
