Over at Weird & Wonderful Worlds, a five minute creative challenge was issued some three years ago, where you have just five minutes to jot down ideas as they come into your head. I like that. Sometimes it's nice to just write something down, post it and move on, rather than to keep rethinking and rewriting the perfect post.
However, I don't do so good with a completely free-form "Have an idea, now!", so I'd rather have a prompt to start the associations somewhere. And I will give myself 15 minutes, because I want to end up with something intelligible and publishable, and I write way too slow to sort my thoughts out in only 5 minutes. Yeah, that's not really the same challenge, is it?
Anyway, if someone would be interested in such a challenge, here are the rough rules:
- Make yourself a nice cup of tea to get the brain juices flowing. This step is mandatory.
- Use the generator below to get your prompt. You don't have to stick to it, it's here just for inspiration. Get more than one and combine them, if you'd like.
- Have a sip of your tea. Think.
- Start the timer and write for 15 minutes. It doesn't matter what you write - A monster stat block? Bullet points of concepts? A micro story or a poem? A stream of consciousness? - but stop when the timer runs out (or as soon as you can, stopping in the middle of a sentence would drive me crazy).
- Post the result! The very point of this challenge is to have a post ready in one short sitting.
I will try to go for thirty prompts in thirty days and you are more than welcome to join me. If you decide to do this challenge, please let me know. I would love to read your creations.
Any new prompts or improvements to the challenge are also very much welcome.
I decided to do this challenge. It actually turned out to be a lot harder than I expected. I prefer to really meditate on my ideas, so to try and come up with something on the fly like that was something that I found difficult.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I also usually keep thinking and rethinking my ideas, so I started this to force myself to change pace. :) But there's a reason for the tea clause - to give myself at least a cup worth of thinking time. :D
Delete15 minutes and calmly sipping tea is probably the better way to do it but I had a lot going on back then lol. Anyway, glad to see someone picking this up. A little surreal given the time and place when I did that, and where we are now.
ReplyDeleteEverything about the last few years (it's actually already a few years!) is a bit surreal.
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