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Category: Weird

Celebrating Our Six-Month Stream-iversary!

Celebrating Our Six-Month Stream-iversary!

Published by Scott on June 11, 2018

I can’t believe believe it was six months ago, back in December 2017, when I first started the ScottWritesStuff creative writing livestream.

I had no idea what to expect back then, but I couldn’t be prouder of what the stream has grown into. I’ve learned so much in these six months, and I’ve had a ton of fun with everyone in chat. Here’s to hoping for an even more awesome six more months to come!

To celebrate our stream-iversary, I decided to try out some things I’ve always wanted to do. For the exercise section, I wanted to see how well I knew my viewers’ writing. I invited anyone in chat to write an (anonymous) seven sentence story in a Google Doc, and then when everyone was done, I went in and tried to guess who wrote each one.

How did I do? Here’s my score:

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Interviewing the Twitter Bird

Interviewing the Twitter Bird

Published by Scott on June 8, 2018

For the last stream’s exercise, we tried something new: interviewing a character to get to know them better.

When writing a story, it’s all to easy to fall into the trap of writing two-dimensional characters. If you have a fun idea for a plot, then you may get so caught up in progressing it forward that the characters are just cardboard cutouts.

In order to make them feel more human, it’s important to get to know them better. Then you can use that information to influence how you write them to make them feel more realistic. And the best way to get to know someone: interviewing them.

So for the exercise, we had chat vote for a character to interview. They ended up choosing the Twitter bird.

Here’s what we came up with:

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Writing a Story Using the Literal Tax Code

Writing a Story Using the Literal Tax Code

Published by Scott on April 18, 2018

For the last stream’s exercise, in honor of U.S. tax day, we tried a new exercise: writing a story that starts with a random sentence from the Form 1040 Instructions.

We generated some random numbers and got three sentences from the 107-page document. All three of them were equally robotic and miserable, but that’s exactly what we signed up for.

Chat voted for one of them, and we started our story with it. Then, halfway through, we got another sentence from the document.

I’d say given those restrictions, we did pretty awesome. But you can read here and decide for yourself: (text from the Instructions is in bold)

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Otter Assassin vs. Duck Secret Agent – Writing Prompt Recap

Otter Assassin vs. Duck Secret Agent – Writing Prompt Recap

Published by Scott on March 26, 2018

For the last stream, with special guest Abbey, we did a fun exercise: Abbey and chat wrote the beginning to a story, then I had to finish it.

We did this before when Abbey was a guest, and I really enjoyed the story we came up with. It was fun to try and make sense of a story that Abbey and chat purposefully tried to make as crazy as possible.

And this time, it was a challenge. Abbey and chat wrote a story about an otter assassin turned pork-bun-saleswoman, targeted by a rival duck.

Yup. That’s what I had to work with. Here’s what we came up with:

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Charity Mini-Golf Game Between Godzilla and Satan – Writing Stream Recap

Charity Mini-Golf Game Between Godzilla and Satan – Writing Stream Recap

Published by Scott on March 21, 2018

For the last stream, with special guest Abbey, we did something we haven’t done in a while: come up with our own writing prompt, then write it.

To do that, we came up with a formula for creating a good prompt: normal idea plus twist equals prompt. For example, robots take over the world (normal idea) plus ducks (the twist) equal the prompt: “A.I. robots have taken over the world but have formed a pact with one species: ducks.”

After coming up with a bunch of fun prompts, chat voted on this one: “A bubble gum company sets up a golf game between Satan and Godzilla in order to get free advertisements but there’s a troll dentist nearby who isn’t happy about it cuz they didn’t solve his riddle first.”

Oh boy. Here’s what we came up with:

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Bird-Boy and Doughnut-Girl’s Love Story – Writing Stream Recap

Bird-Boy and Doughnut-Girl’s Love Story – Writing Stream Recap

Published by Scott on February 12, 2018

For the last stream, we were joined by special guest Abbey, so we decided to try a new exercise: Abbey and chat wrote the beginning to a story, and then I had to complete it.

I left the room as they concocted the beginning, and when I was allowed to come back… I immediately regretted the idea.

I had no idea how to make sense of Abbey/chat’s story. Much less knowing where to take it, I barely understood it!

But then something clicked, inspiration hit me, and I knew what I had to do. Thanks to a few fun other suggestions, we ended up with something pretty beautiful: (bolded section is what Abbey/chat wrote that I had to finish)

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Mario’s “super mushroom” trips come to an end – Writing Stream Recap

Mario’s “super mushroom” trips come to an end – Writing Stream Recap

Published by Scott on February 5, 2018

After the ten stream streak of the Rubbish to Published series, last stream finally marked us going back to our roots during the writing exercise section: random sentences.

Random sentences are a great way to give your creativity a workout. And thankfully we have a great source of them: the kanji poop book.

We’ve gotten some “crappy inspiration” from the poop book before, and it turned out great. This time, we opened up to a random page, getting the kanji for “tea” and three poop-themed sentences to choose from.

The chat voted on which of the three poop-sentences would start our story, and this is what we wrote: (bold sentence was our “random” sentence, “brown” is “tea-colored” in Japanese.)

Continue readingMario’s “super mushroom” trips come to an end – Writing Stream Recap