In a guest post on Jane Friedman’s blog, Jason Keath offers three bad ideas to generate more creative writing. “The goal is to help you generate a wider variety of ideas more quickly,” he says. “Test them out and choose the one that best fits your process.”
- The Bad Idea Method. Take 10 minutes and write down 25 bad ideas for opening lines, story titles, or characters. While this may seem awkward, it’s a good approach for dropping your editorial filters and writing quickly. You might find a good idea on your list or combine two bad ideas into something that clicks.
- Constraint Questions. In this exercise, write down 10 constraints about your WIP and question them. Write down your story rules, genre, setting, and character expectations. Are you trying to hit a certain word count? Does your genre dictate certain elements? “One by one, for each constraint, ask yourself what you would write if you ignored that constraint,” Keath suggests.
- The Fast & Ugly Draft. “No matter how rough your draft is, you can always improve it, fixing smaller pieces here or there is easier than writing perfectly from the start,” Keath writes. To embrace the ugly first draft, set challenging deadlines, restrict your research time, and set aside anything that slows you down, like premature editing or specific word choice.
