This week I ran a workshop on story elements. The exercise for this workshop was more difficult than I thought it would be, but I feel we all walked away with some great story ideas. Our challenge was to take three random elements and write a story weaving in those elements. I used this list I found on Pinterest to choose from: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/83175924344624191/
The elements we had to work with made for some creepy writing. They were identical twins, a party invitation, and a locked closet. We took 30 minutes to write and shared afterwards. But we didn’t stop there. We went for the ultimate challenge!
We chose another set of three elements and incorporated them into the story we had already started. Trust me, it is not an easy task. The second set of elements we randomly picked were a campfire, a scream, and a small lie that gets bigger and bigger. Yeah, things only got creepier with these new elements.
I won’t share my final results because they are very rough, but the plot that I came up with was something like this:
Adrian receives an invitation to the popular girl’s big birthday gala. His identical twin brother, Henry, does not. Adrian goes to the party, but disappears that night. Henry starts a search for his brother. He goes to the popular girl’s house only to find it recently abandoned. The house is empty except for a locked wardrobe.
Spooky, right? The second part of the challenge, I decided to create a scene from the party Adrian goes to, but if I’m honest, I didn’t succeed in incorporating the three new elements. I think this kind of exercise takes more time than the 30 minutes we allotted. At least it really got us thinking and the spooky vibes took us into a genre that was out of our comfort zone.
Try it out and let me know how it works out for you!
followthevoid 