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Month: June 2018

Removing a Bandage in Excruciating Detail

Removing a Bandage in Excruciating Detail

Published by Scott on June 6, 2018

For the last stream’s exercise, we did an exercise we haven’t done in a while: writing about one, small activity in excruciating detail.

This exercise forces you to slow down your pacing and really use the Hammer of Details to crack open your scenes and describe them as vividly as possible.

Last time we did this, we wrote about sitting alone at a carnival. This time, chat voted for something a little darker: removing a bandage.

How did we write 500 words about removing a bandage? Read on to find out.

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Did You Know Cows Produce Over 180 Liters of Drool Per Day?

Did You Know Cows Produce Over 180 Liters of Drool Per Day?

Published by Scott on June 4, 2018

For the last stream’s exercise, we tried out a new exercise: using the Japanese book “Unfortunate Animals” for inspiration.

“Unfortunate Animals” is the name of a book series that’s popular in Japan, where every page has an “unfortunate” fact about animals. For example, most firelies can’t light up, or eels are only black because they’re sunburned, or rhinos’ horns are actually warts.

For the exercise, we opened up to three random pages, translated the “unfortunate” fact, and then chat picked which one we’d write about. They voted on this one: Cows produce 180 liters of drool per day.

Here’s what we came up with:

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Solving Math Problems to Stop a Crazy Murderer

Solving Math Problems to Stop a Crazy Murderer

Published by Scott on June 2, 2018

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:

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