Friday Freewriting – July 30, 2021 – Robert

Posted on July 30, 2021July 29, 2021 by Epic Book Club

Our prompts this week were:

Character: Politician
Object: Lute
Genre/Tone: Saga

As has happened before, I completely forgot one of the elements, in this case the lute. For some reason, my brain has trouble holding the entire prompt at once, and this time I fixated on a politician in a saga, and a lute – which would have been easy to include if I’d only remembered it – simply failed to appear.

Oh well, it’s only an exercise. But one of the points of an exercise is to recognize patterns in what you’re doing, both good and bad. So it’s good to notice my bad habit of ignoring part of the prompt. It means I need to (1) pay more attention in the future, maybe referring back to the prompts as a checklist; and (2) that I might do well to seek out simpler story prompts, and/or to give myself more room and time to develop stories.

On the plus side, I think I did a pretty decent job on the tone of the piece. I’m not sure how appealing it is to a modern audience (let me know in the comments!) but it has a few of the more obvious hallmarks of Icelandic sagas.

Continue reading →

Friday Freewriting – July 23, 2021 – Robert

Posted on July 23, 2021July 22, 2021 by Epic Book Club

This week’s prompts were fun:

Character: Werewolf
Object: Packing tape
Genre/Tone: Satire

The plot for this one came pretty quickly to me, but as soon as I started writing it sprawled out of control with too many characters and not enough theme to hold them all together. Also, I’m not sure a single Beatles pun counts as “satire”. But it was exciting as I wrote, trying to cram everything I was thinking into words on the page. It just needs a lot of work before it’s properly readable. That’s how first drafts usually work: there’s something good or fun in it, but it takes work to communicate that to the reader.

If you want to try your hand at this exercise, please link or post your version in the comments below!

Continue reading →

Friday Freewriting – July 23, 2021 – Megan

Posted on July 23, 2021July 22, 2021 by Epic Book Club

When ‘satire’ was selected as our genre, Robert said he was just relieved it wasn’t romance, which is how I got to the idea of a werewolf breakup. I like the idea of a regular apartment building inhabited by both regular mortals and monsters, in a sort of uneasy truce – I’m adding that to my idea list for a later date! For now, I hope you enjoy the drama of Rodrick and Helen.

Let me know what you think, and if you try this exercise, please let us know!

Genre: Satire
Character: Werewolf
Object: Packing Tape

Continue reading →

Friday Freewriting – July 16, 2021 – Megan

Posted on July 16, 2021July 15, 2021 by Epic Book Club

Image by Great Smokey Mountains National Park

Our Friday Freewriting process is this: One of us fetches the prompts from random online generators, the other handles timing the segements of the exercise. When we’re done, we read our stories out loud to each other before posting. I really do love seeing what we each come up with; but there are definitely times that I have to suppress a twinge of jealousy. Robert’s idea to set his story in pre-history with his main character inventing and improvising during his hunt is fun. I ended up with a main character who nearly dies of self-inflicted stupidity. I nearly did have him freeze to death, but I know enough folks in Search and Rescue that I decided to write his survival instead. People don’t let people freeze to death if they can help it. So Jonathan and Samantha are able to continue their ill-advised trek through the mountains in the winter.

As usual, if you end up writing a story to go with these prompts, I’d love to see it. Stay safe out there, friends.

Character: Skier
Object: Bowl
Genre/Tone: Historical

Continue reading →

Friday Freewriting – July 16, 2021 – Robert

Posted on July 16, 2021July 15, 2021 by Epic Book Club

We weren’t able to post anything last week, and this week we both took significantly more than the allotted time to complete this exercise. Rationally, we know that nobody’s hurt by this and everything is okay, but it still feels like failure. It feels like one of the try-fail cycles that the exercise talks about. But I’m trying to think of them, not so much as try-fail cycles, as try-learn cycles.

For example, I’ve learned the differences between a mammoth and a mastodon. I’ve also learned that research takes time away from writing.

In fact, the prompts were not that difficult:

Character: Skier
Object: Bowl
Genre/Tone: Historical.

Moreover, I’m actually kinda satisfied with the story that resulted; it needs a lot of work, but it’s basically coherent and even has a couple exciting moments. I might use it as an exercise in editing sometime. I really liked Megan’s dark survival story, too, and I liked that we both took “bowl” in poetic rather than literal directions. So in the end, I’m happy to have plenty to learn from in this week’s writing.

I hope you’re learning things from this, too, and even more from your own writing. If you’re joining us in these (or any other exercises), feel free to share or link in the comments!

Continue reading →

Friday Freewriting – July 2, 2021 – Megan

Posted on July 2, 2021July 1, 2021 by Epic Book Club

This was a fun prompt! I haven’t read much in the mystery genre, so I definitely failed to incorporate that aspect. I think that ghosts are mysterious; and I do love a ghost story. I really like what I named the ship. I might swipe it for other stories. If nothing else, this exercise creates great fodder for other stories.

As always, if you end up using this prompt or any of the other prompts we’ve tried, please let us know – we’d love to see what you come up with! Here’s the format we’re using, if you need a refresher!

Character: Sailor
Object: Thumb Tack
Genre/Tone: Fantasy/Mystery

Continue reading →

Friday Freewriting – Robert – June 25, 2021

Posted on June 25, 2021June 24, 2021 by Epic Book Club

This week’s prompts got me so interested in how a fantasy character would fit into a sci-fi world that I nearly forgot to include the object, and I struggled to get anywhere near a plot. I forced something through, kinda, and I think I could make something of this with a little more time and space; but by the time I figured out where I was going, the opportunity to fill it out was basically gone.

This week’s prompts:

Character: Demigod
Object: Deodorant
Genre/Tone: Sci-fi

Of course, I almost forgot to include the Object prompt at all.

If you want to try this exercise yourself, drop your story (or a link to wherever you post it) in the comments below!

Continue reading →

Friday Freewriting – Megan – June 25, 2021

Posted on June 25, 2021June 24, 2021 by Epic Book Club

Character: Demigod
Object: Deodorant
Genre/Tone: Sci-Fi

Space, a smelly frontier…
Image by Raziel Abulafia

As I remember, whenever gods show up in Star Trek, they end up being aliens with advanced technology, but they aren’t actually divinities. So with this prompt I wondered what it would be like to be a real demigod in a world of Star Trek-like technology. This is not a full exploration of that possibility, but it was a fun start. I think that adding deordorant to the mix just begs for a funny, light-hearted story. And maybe that’s ok. As usual, if you end up trying the prompt, I’d love to read what you come up with!

Continue reading →