Bandwagon

Hop on the bandwagon, leave you own point of view on the step. You don’t need any baggage – the herd will tell you what to wear, who to vote for, when to laugh, how to love. See what’s trending, follow that. Savour the fifty shades of saccharine coated latest fads and never mind the sour underbelly or the rising stench of warmed-up bullshit.

Who cares if you sail blind for a thousand days through indifferent air? Who notices that it’s a bumpy ride, with your jellied spine continuously jostled and jolted by the whims of others? Just wallow in the forlorn knowledge that you are in with the in crowd. Your envy is the perfect shade of green and you can lay all individuality aside as you roll along with the circus parade.

Object Writing 14

Today’s word – ‘Tube’

Down in the realm of the dead, a withered place of no return, a tunnel stretches into infinity. This feat of urban engineering, a gateway into the world beyond, is air-conditioned by the chill fear of unknowing and swept daily by the trailing rags of the dispossessed.

Standing on the platform’s hard edge, some ancient fear, buried deep, submerged beneath a surface of acceptable behaviour, screams out. Its echo, trapped in the tiled walls, cries “Do not ride this tube.”

Pulsating breezes, followed by vibrations which travel up my spine, turn me about as some invisible hand in the small of my back pushes me towards the escalator and I rise from the deep and step, blinking, into the world of cars, buses and scurrying workers. I breathe deep, inhaling the full life of fumes and dusty streets, and am glad.

Object Writing 13

Today’s word – ‘Band’

Some alchemy had transformed base metal into echoes of crystal raindrops and thousands of glittering bodies swayed to the exotic rhythm of a steel band, allowing the throbbing rumble to permeate their bones. The lime tang of the music quenched thirsty souls and sent them soaring, flying towards paradise on the pulsating Calypso beat. Light ricocheted from the city windows, sending its discharge out in a sequined rainbow, sewn over a hundred tired evenings by loving mothers, who now, with ample hips swaying, reflected the dance in their proud smiles.

Object Writing 11

Today's Word - 'Simulation'

Press pause. Hold the blurred images in their frozen motion. Reflect on the race run. Remember the feel of pistons pumping day after endless day as you pounded on, charging ahead with a lion’s roar, driving headlong into the fray. You were an efficient machine, agile and fast, a fearless warrior defending your patch, swerving through bureaucracy with silver grace until a screech of brakes saw you stopped in your tracks, blood poisoned by your adrenaline fuelled career path and dragged down beneath those fathomless depths of red tape.

Look back over the crumbled remains of a job well done and rake over the ashes. It’s there for all to see in the black molten tracks and the stench of burning rubber. You rose too fast, aimed too high and were scorched by the effort to steer your path to the top. If you could hit resume and re-run the simulation of your life what changes would you make?

Guided Visualisation

Doing my writing warm-ups, in the form of ten minute object writes, reminded me of a workshop session I ran for a writing group a few years ago and have also used with classes of children to help them explore their use of the senses in creating writing.

We tried something called ‘guided visualisation’, following a series of exercises based around a tray of 15 random objects I had gathered together.

The exercises invited no-pressure, anything-goes writing and the value of them was that each writer brought unique experiences to the object.

Some writers love these prescribed types of exercises, and others hate them.  Whatever your feeling, it’s worth giving it a go once in a while, because sometimes the results can be exhilarating, sending your stream of consciousness into a completely unexpected direction. 

Exercise 1: "Object Tray Game" – Uncover the tray and give 1 minute to try and take in as much information as possible. Write down everything you can remember in as much detail as possible. This is not ‘Kim’s Game’ though, so don’t just try and memorise the objects – you are trying to write details about each object.

Exercise 2: Ten lines – Choose one item from the tray. Look at your item until you are certain you have memorised everything about it. Then put it back and start writing. Do not look at it again until you are certain you have described everything about it in the best detail you can manage.

If you've done a good job of paying attention to detail, you should have no trouble writing ten lines or more on the description of a simple item. If you're having trouble getting that far, take a help card and use the hints.

Help Card

Use these senses – sight, touch, smell – and write whatever occurs to you.

What do you notice about the shadows the object casts?

What does the surface feel like?

What colours is it and what colours/images  are reflected in it?

Are there any marks on the surface? Any signs of wear? Any scars? Any engraving?

If it has several parts, how is it put together?

Replace the object with another. Again, look at the object, hold it in your memory, and write every detail of your chosen object, no matter how minute. When you've finished check to see what you got right, what you got wrong, and what you overlooked entirely.

Exercise 3: Take a picture of a character. I just print some random pictures from a Google image search. Imagine that you're going to have to identify them in a police line-up, or better yet, describe them to a police artist. Take in as much about them as you can in one minute, then put the picture aside and write down as much as you can about the person.

Repeat with another picture.

Exercise 4: Choose an interesting setting that you know quite well – the shopping centre, the park, an old Victorian house. Try and really pay attention to the surroundings. Do your best to notice everything, not just with your sense of sight, but with all your senses.

Exercise 5: You should have a good idea of a person, a place and some objects by now, so put them together to create a scene in which you use everything you observed. Put some action in there. Put dialogue. But your main issue in this exercise is to create an absolutely over-the-top all-senses-engaged presentation of two people and the space they occupy.

Object Writing 10

Today's Word - 'Novice'

Eyes cast downwards, he feasts on the blank sheet, abandons a mumbled prayer to the scrivener’s god, and lets himself wander lost into the white blizzard of wordlessness.

His tapping nib sends a spray of obsidian blobs, footprints of a Lilliputian army, to mar the serene beauty. They must belong to the pacing monks who clutter up the quiet contemplation of his mind’s cloister.

With creative fervour now burning his cheeks, and mindful concentration fluttering his lashes, his hand begins to move. Soon tight grip cramping words give up a line, then two, before self-doubt snags his sleeve. The careful scaffolding is undermined and blocks crash down, thudding about him, scratching out his thoughts. Back and forth black lines scrape grooves. Back and forth rattles the shuttle as the loom weaves the one truth – there will always be days when you are a novice. 

Object Writing 7

Today's Word - 'Council'

Moon circle time again. That once monthly torture that is our family council, but today, for a change, I am safe. I have done nothing wrong. Annoyed no-one. Not taken one single step out of line.

Yet she sits opposite me with a smug set to the thin red thread of her lips. She is waiting. Waiting for her turn with the talking stick.

My stomach takes an elevator plunge. What does she know? What will she say once the smooth bone, encased in sky blue beads, is in her hands?

She points the stick like a gun to my head. A vicious shake of it rattles out my death knell, while the turquoise eye of the peacock feather tied to its end winks cheekily. I’m done for.

A fake smile shrouds her intention. Only I know that she intends to beat me with that stick until the cork explodes from my bottled-up problems and I confess the one truth – I don’t belong here.

Object Writing 6

Today's Word - 'Lid'

She licked the salty grit from her lips and placed both hands on the slab. Ten tons of rough hewn granite steadied her trembling fingers as they roamed over the furrowed inscriptions. Strong lines threaded deep and sharp, a tribute to the skill of some ancient stonemason who had once spent his day chink, chinking away with the cold metal of his chisel.

In the ten minutes it took to lift the sarcophagus lid she lived a lifetime, recalling her life’s study to the humming flow of blood washing clean her veins. Each squeal of the pulley, each thud of the counter weight, elongated her anticipation, stretching it taut and plucked in discordant strains. Finally, with a rush of stale air, it was off. Stepping forward she shone her torch down through the rising dust motes of past time.

So what is 'Object Writing'?

For the last month I’ve been playing about with object writing. It’s a simple idea. Randomly choose an object, focus your senses on it then write about it for exactly ten minutes.

I’ve been trying to do it every morning over the summer holidays as a warm-up before whatever writing I’m doing that day. Now it’s term-time I’m still doing it, as I wait for the phone to ring with offers of teaching supply work (not that I really want the work, but I do have to earn enough money to be able to eat while I write).

I set a timer - Google will give you plenty of online choices – and write in one of the green hard-back journals I’ve grown to prefer over the last few years.

The aim of the writing is to remain as sense bound as possible, diving into your sense memory to show, not tell, as you let yourself write freely, following any associations that the object brings up.

I don’t expect to cover all the senses in every ten minute stint, but I’m finding some easier than others. For me, touch and sight are the obvious choices and I have to force myself to get in taste and sound. Smell is more problematic though, since I have an incredibly limited sense of smell, which seems to be plonked in the more disgusting end of the register – smoke and dog farts being things I tend to pick up on (why couldn’t it be flowers?).

I have, however, been using two additional senses:

·           organic sense – which is an awareness of inner bodily functions, like heartbeat, pulse, breathing, pain and muscle tension.

·           kinaesthetic sense – the sense of movement or motion in relation to the world around.

In theory anything goes. You just write about the object you’ve picked, keeping it sense-bound, and not worrying about complete sentences. It can take you to some interesting places as your mind drags up unexpected associations.

There’s no real need to stick with objects that you are familiar with though. As you develop confidence, you might want to broaden out to more abstract things. I’ve been using the website Object Writing , which posts a daily word, a random noun, and invites people to post whatever they come up with in their ten minutes. I edit my writing before I post it, but I know some people post exactly what they’ve written in their ten minutes.

If you fancy a go, try this exercise. Choose an object from this group:

blanket	knife	saddle
sleeve	lamp	doughnut
canoe	chimney	stick

Write freely. No rhythm, no rhyme. No need for complete sentences. Use all seven senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, organic, and kinesthetic. You don’t have to stick with the object – it’s just a starting point. If your senses take you somewhere else – so be it.

There are a few things to bear in mind though:

·         Object writing is meant to be a warm-up. That’s why it’s important to stick to the ten minutes. It should prepare you for whatever other writing you have planned. Try not to get carried away and let your ten minutes stretch to thirty and your warm-up become a substitute for finishing your novel, or in my case a draft letter to try and find an agent.

·         Object writing is about showing, not telling. It is an exercise, like a morning workout, that you use to sharpen your senses and improve your writing. It does happen to be fun, challenging and worth the effort.

Apparently, after six weeks of this daily workout you should notice a difference, or is that pilates? I’m on week three, so I’ll let you know how I get on. In the meantime I’m collecting all my ‘writes’ on a separate page on this blog.

Object Writing 5

Today's Word - 'Resort'

I stride through the hotel dining room, trying to ignore the invisible pungent force of decaying rat. A woman in sunglasses and large floppy hat nods a toothless smile in my direction. She wears a striped Bedouin tent and from one cavernous sleeve a withered arm extends to wave an egg smeared fork at me. At first I mistake her for the evening entertainment arrived early – drag-queen face caked in full war-paint, but no, she is just one more in a line of ghoulish residents in this resort for the elderly.

As I step onto the poolside terrace the full force of blaring horns from the too near road stretches my nerves on a blue-rinsed rack. The sound would undoubtedly menace the morning sunbathers if it weren’t for the fact that most of them have long since slid into a world of muffled silence, populated with the underwater noise of garbled whale song.

The wealthy remains of a once beautiful person are arranged on the lounger next to mine, bacon crisped skin spilling out between open slats in her red bikini to hang in low slung swags which threaten to drag her down into the afterlife. On one creased thigh sits an inked in butterfly, lying like a crumpled tissue left behind after her free spirit spread its wings and flew away. Suntan cream pools in congealed clumps in the pitted dimples of her stomach and trickles in slug trails to stain the blue cushion on which she slowly fries, slowly dies. Her bony fingers, overpowered by numerous rings, drape lifelessly over her book – Fifty Shades of Grey – an unlikely choice, unless she thought it was about hair styles.  

Four Early Object Writes 1 to 4

Cast

The reek of donkey jackets, damp lanolin overlaid with fish from the wharf-side, jostles me as I push through the warehouse crowd.

I edge to the front of the semi-circle of men and scan their faces, searching for the nod. Dampness creeps through the corduroy as I kneel, scraping the dice into my palm, and reach into my pocket for a coin. I throw a pound into the middle of the semi-circle of grey concrete and a waterfall of clinks follows as coins rain down, metal upon metal, from the players.

I fiddle nervously with the dice, rolling them through my fingers, feeling dark indentations on cold plastic surfaces. My heart begins to race and a faint trace of sweat forms on my upper lip. An odd mix of fear and hope surges through my veins.

Gripping the dice hard I take myself to the place. Blacking out the crowd I fly to the top of the hill and look down on the city spread out in a net of glittering lights over the darkened land. A gentle breeze ruffles the ends of my hair, calming nerves with the warm, earthy scent of damp soil.

It is time. I open my eyes and regard the shabby coats, the brick wall and the towering piles of wooden crates. Someone coughs – a harsh, racking from a work-ruined chest. I blow on the dice and let hot cider-laced fumes slow time and motion, allowing me to watch my own hand sweep forward through the treacle air.

The dice fly in a straight line, with no wobble. They bounce together, clattering, and glance lightly off the wall. They are cast and I can do no more.

Bus

I scramble amid the crush of locals to get my foot on the step of the dolmuş. Hauling myself onto this cross between a mini-bus, a taxi and a ramshackle delivery van I see that it lives up to its name and the whole spectrum of society is stuffed inside.

Ignoring the olfactory assault of ripe goat, fermenting raki and lemon cologne, I squeeze between the sticky, plastic upholstery and ram myself into a sweaty gap in the rear of the bus, grateful at least of obtaining a window seat.

I share the back bench with a family of four. Next to me sits father, plainly dressed in a black suit, with white shirt primly buttoned tight at the throat. Sun-aged skin hangs in leathery folds beneath sunken eyes hidden by caterpillar eyebrows. His nose twitches above a full moustache, sniffing out the lie of the land as we avoid eye-contact. His wife is suitably veiled in a vibrant clash of florals, topped with a home knitted cardigan, unsuitable, to my mind, in such heat. Small children, one of each, finish the group, in grubby blue school smocks, back buttoned, with sleeves outgrown to reveal bony wrists.

Something alerts me, cries ‘creep’, and I edge further into my corner, holding my legs away from his in calf-cramping torture. The pot-holed road allows him to bump closer until we press knees in fetid confinement. The heat of his hand passes through my linen trousers and I am frozen in surprise. Shock initially brings out the Brit in me and I ignore him, shake my leg, then tut with sharp teeth-sucking clicks. When his clammy palm lays claim to my inner thigh I am galvanised. “Shameful”, I shout, sending a skin tearing stamp down his shin, and leave his wife to finish him off.

Virtue

I can find no foothold in virtue. It is smooth-faced and unclimbable. My body flattens on its polished marble surface as my fingers seek out a crevice which I can utilise in my desire to reach the holy summit.

Endless cold seeps into my bones igniting a small hope that the pride and anger and jealousy that holds me back will be frozen out, no longer to keep me immersed in my own milk-curdling odour of self-preservation.

Onwards, upwards, slow stealth wins out and virtue sits above, within my reach. Imagining her to be tall and beautiful, white robes flowing behind her and eyes shining like the constellations peeping through a veil of the blackest night, I am shocked by what is before me. With pale pinched flesh, adorned in rough squalor, she stoops to lend an aged hand. I let myself slide backwards, unsure now that the dizzying heights are what I really want if the cost is to be worn out from toil, residing shoeless and bedraggled on this barren pinnacle.

Hall

Another wave of smoked mackerel washes over me as I lean forward, wincing at the gritty pain in my knees, to rub linseed oil into the ochre and red triangles of floor tiles. With long, curved strokes I inch my way down the hall, bent over, crawling like a supplicant ready to prostrate myself before the altar of restoration.

The soft rustle of velvet passes close by and hurried footsteps intrude upon the silence, hussling down the hall. I gasp, sit back on my haunches and swing my head towards the diminishing sound. Nothing is there. I stare, cloth in hand, unable to rise.  A sense of dread, accompanied by the tingle of electric ice, assaults me. I am jolted by a silky caress on my cheek, both delicate and repulsive – the touch of spiders’ webs – which disappears in an instant to leave behind a faint scent of lavender leaking into the empty hall. 

Same but Different

I like this writing prompt and had great fun using it with a creative writing group as a ten minute warm-up. It uses the same sentence starter, but puts it with a different image. The effect is to spark off a wider range of ideas.

She couldn’t count how many years they had hated each other…	She couldn’t count how many years they had hated each other…
The message arrived late in the afternoon…	The message arrived late in the afternoon…
She got out of the car and strode purposefully down the High Street…	She got out of the car and strode purposefully down the High Street…

Reworking Fairy Tales

The park and ride bus into Cambridge yesterday made me think about that old writing prompt, the reworking of a fairy tale. The teenager next to me was reading a book where the heroine was called Ash and had a stepmother. Sounds familiar? I’m not sure if it was the book ‘Ash’ by Malinda Lo. If it was, the twist in the reworking has Ash ending up in a lesbian relationship, just one of endless takes made on this particular fairy tale over the centuries. With the current young adult interest in the supernatural, reworking of fairy tales is selling books, films and TV. A recent addition, proving to be very popular, is the American fantasy-drama, Grimm. I have not caught the series yet, but I like the premise of detectives investigating crimes based on fairy tales.

Reworking fairy tales is an idea I’ve always enjoyed, but then I have always loved the original fairy tales. One of the books I liked to read to classes of junior children was Kaye Umansky’s ‘The Fwog Pwince - the Twuth’, and I have used the reworking writing prompt in various guises with children and adults. The year 4 team I worked with in Leicestershire had great fun producing newspaper reports based on the events in nursery rhymes along the lines of ‘Fairytale News’ by Colin Hawkins, which has a mini-newspaper insert full of reports based on fairy tales.
 
Familiarity with the story is what makes this a good writing prompt and I have used it for a quick write, and for longer (homework) sessions with writing groups. What you are asking writers to work on is developing their version of a famous story, short or long, but with the aim of making it different and there are many ways you might do this. If you fancy having a go, think about one of the variations below:

1. Inject some local knowledge. Rework the fairy tale by setting it in a place you know well.
2. Bring the story up-to-date. How will you have to change the plot to make it fit in a modern setting? I think ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ would make a great basis for something set in the current political climate. Of course, reworking does not have to just be about fairy tales. ‘Gods Behaving Badly’ by Marie Phillips is about the twelve gods of Olympus, who are alive and well in the twenty-first century, unhappily crammed together in a London townhouse and holding down jobs.
3. Choosing to set the story in an easily recognisable time period also works well with reworking fairy tales. Victorian or Elzabethan London might make a good place for Cinderella to live, but then so would the Wild West. I’ve always wondered why the world around Sleeping Beauty never seemed to change much in the story. What would happen if she woke to the world of the 1920s, with flapper costumes and looser morals all around her?
4. Rewriting the fairy tale in a particular genre could bring interesting results. Ali Baba and the Forty Theives as sci-fi - or has that been done in the film ‘The Time Bandits’? What about Goldilocks and Snow White teamed-up as Philip Marlowe style detectives? Am I getting carried away here? Maybe I should stop watching all the Shrek films!
5. Rewriting a fairy tale as a poem can be fruitful. I stumbled across a website where the author has done just this (RewritingFairy-tales)  It’s certainly something which worked for Roald Dahl in ‘Revolting Rhymes’. If you haven’t read that, get down to your library straight away! 
6. You could try to write the story from a different point of view – first person is currently very fashionable, or do what Kaye Umansky does in her poem ‘I’m sick of that Hansel and Gretal’ (‘Witches in Stitches’) and write from the antagonist’s point of view.

There are endless variations on the theme of reworking an old tale and many bestsellers have been produced along these lines. A quick search will bring you up lots of original stories, but if your memory fails you and you can’t think of any off the top of your head, try some of the ones below. Above all, have fun. Right at the bottom of this post is a very short story I wrote after setting this writing prompt for a group.

Aesop's Fables The Ass in the Lion's Skin The North Wind and the Sun The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse The Sick Lion The Tortoise and the Hare The Boy Who Cried Wolf	Hans Christian Andersen The Emperor's New Clothes The Little Mermaid The Princess and the Pea The Snow Queen Thumbelina The Ugly Duckling
Grimms Fairy Tales Beauty and the Beast Cinderella Goldilocks And The Three Bears Hansel and Gretel Little Red Riding Hood Sleeping Beauty Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs The Three Little Pigs	Nursery Rhymes Baa Baa Black Sheep Little Boy Blue Little Miss Muffet Mary Had A Little Lamb There Was An Old Woman Who Lived In A Shoe

 Trials of the Job

“Mirror, mirror, on the …”

“Get lost!”

          The mirror was entirely black. It wouldn’t even show Esmeralda her own reflection, let alone any magical revelations. Stamping her foot did nothing to galvanise the mirror either, though her broom began sweeping the kitchen floor, which was a small bonus.

                       

“I need to see what she’s doing.” Esmeralda did not usually resort to begging.

          “Phone her.” The mirror replied in a flat, arms folded across the chest kind of voice.

          “Why are you being so awkward?” Strangely, Esmeralda felt tears pricking at her eyes and turned away from the mirror before it saw her weakness.

          “I don’t like being used.”

          “You’re a mirror for God’s sake. What are you for if not for using?”

          Esmeralda was feeling cross now and yet she knew that it was no use arguing. She just didn’t have any threats to hold over the mirror short of smashing it and that was the one thing she could never do.

          “She’s never been in this situation before.” Esmeralda tried appealing to the mirror’s better nature. “It’s not really sneaking. It’s just showing we care.”

          A small glimmer of light began to flicker in the furthest depths of the glass. That had sparked its conscience and Esmeralda quickly moved to press her point home.

          “What if she’s in danger? She could be lying in an alley, her life blood slowly seeping into the litter strewn gravel.”

          Suddenly the mirror flared into life, becoming a multifaceted diamond scattering beams of light in every direction, before settling down to a street scene where a small red devil was dragging a mini-witch by the hand towards a house. The windows were festooned with cobwebs and on the front step a particularly evil looking pumpkin sat grimacing at passers-by. Knocking on the door, the two cried in unison,

          “Trick or treat!”

          Sighing, Esmeralda returned to her cauldron. She allowed herself the smallest of smiles now that she knew her daughter’s first date was running smoothly.

In the background the mirror chuckled gently as it whispered,

          “Ah, the trials of motherhood!”

Picture This 3

I love this chap's face all squashed up against the glass, but just who is he and what's he doing?

Ten Minutes to Spare?

I love taking part in what I call 'quick writes' - taking a writing prompt and running with it for a set time. I use this with groups of adults and children alike. It's quite something to see everyone with their heads down and scribbling away. Somehow the pressure of working like this lights that creative spark for me, though I understand some people find the pressure a bit of a strain. The same activity would also good for a writing warm-up to be undertaken in the solitary confinement of your own writing space. 


For this activity you choose a storyline from one set of boxes and a genre from the other, then write for ten minutes without stopping. 

A woman/man walks into a room and finds a character of the opposite sex they weren’t expecting.	Two people meet on a bridge and one hands over a package.	A person climbs a cliff and someone is waiting for them at the top.
Something to do with the weather results in school girl being discovered as a blackmailer.	A group from a village Women's Institute win a competition to go on safari together.	While snooping around her employer's house a babysitter is and finds something disturbing.
A character hopes for a fresh start at their new school, but arriving on their first day they encounter someone they have met before.	Your character suspects their partner is having an affair and decides to spy on them. What they discover is unexpected.	A character buys an antique urn for their home, but when they get it home, they find there are ashes in it.

horror	historical	romantic
chick lit	sci-fi	fantasy
crime	rags to riches	war

Picture This 2

Who are these women? Why have they got together? Where are they?


Possible titles - Spring Chicks, Island Ferry, Old Friends, The Reunion

Picture This 1

Why is this old sofa out on the street? Who put it there? 

Creating Convincing Characters

This is an activity I used with a group of adult writers, but you could use it on your own. It’s a way of creating a new character, inventing their back story and generally getting to know them.

You will need to prepare some resources first. I made three sets of cards, using a different colour for each set (I’m used to working with children!), but you could just make three lists.  On set one I wrote a selection of names, on set two various ages and on set three jobs.

1. Draw a card from each set to get the basis of your new character.

It could be Joe – aged 9 – a shoplifter

Or Twister – aged 19 – a bodyguard

You might have to decide on gender if it’s not obvious from the name.

2. Now decide on the dramatic function your character will perform within the structure of a story. They could be the protagonist/hero, the antagonist/villain, the helper/guardian or the hinderer/trickster.

3. Listing six milestones on that character’s journey to their job. These should explain how a character ended up in that profession.

4. Draw around your own hand. Imagine it is the outline of a hand of the character in your story.

What is the hand used for?

Describe each finger in detail. If they are wearing rings, why are the rings there?

Describe any distinguishing marks.

What is the texture of their skin?

What does the hand come in contact with during the week? At the weekends?

5. Draw an outline of the same character’s foot.

Describe their shoes. Where were they bought?

How many pairs of shoes does the character own?

What surfaces does the foot come in contact with?

Consider how connected the character is with the ground on which they walk: would they prefer to live somewhere else? Why?

Now you’ve begun to get to know this character you can start thinking about how you might use them in a story. Try one of these:

Choose one of the 6 milestones in the character’s journey into their job. Use it as a starting point for a piece of writing in which something happens to the hand and/or foot. Include at least four elements from the exercises you have just completed,  ‘showing not telling’, to convey an aspect of the character’s personality.

This character is taking part in a ritual (burying a pet, celebrating a divorce, exorcising a poltergeist, a Sunday lunch, a bikers’ initiation). The ritual is interrupted. How? What happens next?

Your character is on a plane and they begin to talk to the stranger sitting next to them. They don't have to be swapping confessions. One of them might be boasting or lying. You might want to think about a genre for the story, but aim to move your plot towards an outcome in which one of the characters is unexpectedly changed by the encounter.

Your character is flying to an exciting destination where they hope to act or feel differently. List five or six items associated with their old life which they cannot bear to leave behind. What happens to these items in the new setting? How does your character let go of them?