For the last stream’s exercise, we did an exercise about overcoming writer’s block.
There are many different types of writer’s block, though most people use it to mean “not knowing where to take the story next.”
It turns out the best way to beat writer’s block is to, well, write! It doesn’t matter if it’s good or if it makes sense, quite often just getting something down on the page will get the juices flowing.
To show that off, we induced writer’s block on ourselves. Chat came up with an opening sentence, then we wrote half a story, and stopped (that’s when we got “writer’s block”). To unclog the block, we got a random sentence that had to be the next sentence in our story, then we had to finish it to the end.
Here’s what we came up with:
(The bold sentence is the one chat came up with.)
“You have 12 minutes to solve the equation, or they will all die,” he announced in a voice empty of emotion.
I’d woken up alone mere seconds ago in this locked classroom inside of my high school. I’d pulled at the doorknob, banged on the door, screamed at the top of my lungs, but nothing answered me except the flickering lights down the hallway.
That’s when the PA system turned on with a crackle. The voice informed me of my predicament, and the TV in the corner buzzed on, revealing black and white security camera footage of my family. My mom, dad and little sister looked to be unconscious, slumped over and bound in chairs with their mouths taped shut. We’d had our differences, but seeing them like this made me feel sick to my stomach with anger.
“Pick up the chalk and solve the equation,” the voice continued from the speaker above. “Time’s a wasting! You only have 11 minutes now.”
It felt like a nightmare. I should be waking up right now. Why wasn’t I waking up?!
I forced myself to tear my eyes away from the TV screen of my family and looked at the chalkboard. It was an incredibly complex equation, though there was something vaguely familiar about it. Did we go over how to do these in class? I couldn’t remember. I was barely awake in class these days. Hell, I barely even bothered to show up most times.
My bad grades and miserable attendance were something my parents and I fought about all the time. When they were home, that is. Most days, they were gone on business trips, leaving me to watch my nine-year-old sister, to play both father, brother, and teenage kid at the same time.
I’d mostly chosen teenage kid. But now, I regretted all the nights I hadn’t done my stupid homework for Mrs. Ruth.
Desperate to find help, I looked around the room and realized something: I was in a math class. If I could just find a copy of the textbook we used, then I could figure this out! I frantically opened the drawers of the teacher’s desk and the cupboards and closets in the back of the classroom, rifling through dozens of different editions and levels of textbooks.
Yes! I found it, hidden among a bunch of algebra and trigonometry books, my sacred math book. I’d never been happier to see it. I yanked it out, ran to the front of the classroom, and threw it open, tearing through the pages, desperate to find the section that I needed.
“Five minutes left,” came the monotone voice.
I didn’t pay it any attention. I’d found the page I needed. Holding the book open in one hand, I grabbed a piece of chalk with my sweaty fingers on the other and started quickly solving the equation. I followed the steps in the book, piece by piece. Simplifying, factoring, deriving, simplifying again… god I wish I had a calculator!
“One minute left.”
Done! I slammed the book shut, stepped back from the chalkboard, and took a deep breath. I wasn’t sure if I got the right answer, but I’d done everything I could. The voice on the PA crackled on again:
“The waves were crashing on the shore; it was a lovely sight.”
I froze, eyes wide. That was the beginning of the story my mother had told me countless times over about how she and dad had met. I turned to stare at the TV screen, fearful of what I’d see.
My family, my mother, father, little sister, were all unbound and waving up at me, big smiles across their face.
I was so confused. The PA turned back on, but this time the voice wasn’t robotic; it was warm and excited. It was my mother.
(This next sentence was the randomly-generated
sentence to break our “writer’s block.”)“We’d both started our days angry, and together it turned into a wonderful night.”
The door to the classroom opened and the lights turned on. In walked my family and… Mrs. Ruth? She was wearing her usual math dress covered in rainbow numbers. She walked up to the chalkboard, adjusted her glasses, and nodded in approval.
“What is going on here?” I asked.
My mother spoke up first. “We wanted to help you do better in math, honey.”
“Mrs. Ruth contacted us,” my father added. “You haven’t turned in a homework assignment in over two months.”
My jaw dropped open in disbelief. “So you set all of this up? Just to bring up my grades a bit?”
“It’s not just about one grade, dear,” my mother said. “You have college to think about. One bad grade can mean not getting into the school you want, which means not getting the job you want, which means not getting the life you want. It’s a whole ripple effect!”
“We know it may seem a little excessive,” dad said, nodding from side to side. “And you may be a little upset at us. But hey, it’s just like the story your mother always tells about when we met. We’d both been dumped earlier that day, and we were sulking and miserable, but then look at what happened! One of the best days of our lives.”
I glared back and forth at the two of them, and then to my sister and Mrs. Ruth who’d gone alone with their insane plan. Their perfect little plan to try and turn their delinquent son into someone they could brag about happily at their business parties.
All I could do was rub my face and sigh. “This is exactly the reason why I don’t do my homework,” I grumbled.
I really liked doing this exercise because it shows just how effective writing anything, even random sentences, can be at beating writer’s block. When we first got that random sentence, we thought it was hopeless. How could we possibly fit it into the story?
But then we came up with the idea of it being his mother’s story. Then that led to the idea of the PA voice being his mother, which led to the idea of his parents setting up the whole thing, which led to him being a delinquent teen who his parents wanted to “fix.”
Everything in the first half about grades, being at odds with his family, skipping math class, none of it was there on the first draft. We went in there afterward and put it in to firm up the story a bit. And it was all thanks to the random sentence telling us what our story wanted to be.
After that we did a writing prompt and chat voted for this one submitted by MoonlightRose69: One day every year, the strings of fate that connect people are visible. Friendship, Family, Soulmate, Lover, Enemy. However, that day, you see a different type of string connecting you to someone.
There were a lot of ways to take this story. Perhaps a string that was a different color? Perhaps a super rare string? Perhaps a string that had never been seen before by anyone?
In the end, we went with something even weirder: a string that goes all the way up to the sky.
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you. We stream on Twitch every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday at 7:30pm-10:30pm (U.S. Eastern Standard Time).
And you missed the stream, you can still watch Rubbish to Published, the writing exercises, or the writing prompts on YouTube, or watch the full stream reruns until Twitch deletes them.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Scott Wilson is the author of the novel Metl: The ANGEL Weapon,
forthcoming November 2018.
Featured image: Pakutaso