Challenge #5

At the beginning of the month I decided October would be “Challenge Month” in order to encourage you to get out there and take more challenges with your writing—to push you to try new things, accumulate new experiences. Every time we stray from the familiar we give ourselves the chance to discover the profound…or, at the very least, the new!

And today is the last of those challenges. Last week you brainstormed story ideas inspired by the observations you made when you got outside your office. Hopefully, you came up with at least 10 ideas. Now is the time for you to sit back and look more critically at those ideas.

As you may recall, I went to Boston Common, and three of the ideas I shared with you were:

1. An animated dog adventure about a dog who feels she doesn’t fit in with the other dogs.

2. A gravestone worker who imagines the people buried come to life… and then he actually falls in love with one of them.

3. A peanut vendor who’s taken over the REAL peanut vendor’s cart and plants a bomb in it—and our main character sees this—what does she do to make sure that bomb doesn’t go off and how does she help capture this terrorist?

The next step in the challenge is easy—pick a day for each idea to happen, a day for your story to begin. And oh? Guess what? How about two days from now? How about Halloween???

That’s right, add another dimension to each of your ideas and imagine it taking place on Halloween. Interesting, right? How adding that one element can change your idea?

In idea #1 above, what if the dogs were all in Halloween costumes and what if the owners of the dogs were kids—also in Halloween costumes. And as the parents around are all chatting with one another about the costumes and the candy their kids will be gorging on tonight, our main character dog [let’s call her Lucy] disappears. We don’t see it and neither does anyone else, but Lucy is gone. As everyone frantically searches for her, we see Lucy trotting away, across the street and out of the park. She’s depressed because none of the other dogs played with her or talked to her… But in the city, she’s quickly noticed by a man dressed in funny colors compared to most of the men Lucy sees—he picks her up, scratches her behind her Spock-ears [yes, her owners had made her look like a doggy-Spock] and tells her he’s got something for her. Turns out the something is imprisonment! Lucy finds herself in a kennel with a bunch of other dogs—who all think she’s a leader of some sort because of her costume, so surely she can get them out. So Lucy uses her smarts to do just that and eventually to even bring the bad guys to justice.

In idea #2 our gravestone guy, dressed as Rhett Butler for a Halloween party he’s supposed to go to when he’s done—let’s make him about 45—is having a normal afternoon, talking to his imaginary friends, when a new one pops up, from a gravestone he’s never been able to communicate with before today. She’s gorgeous and he discovers she came out because she saw him in the Rhett Butler costume—clothes that are from her time and therefore familiar to her. Too bad she’s not real, she could totally be his Scarlett O’Hara at his Halloween party. And then—FLASH. Something happens and she IS real… and they go to the party… where she informs him this is a one-night only deal. Bummer. They’re so perfect together. What can they possibly do to get around this minor problem of living in different realities—his alive, hers dead?

And for idea #3 imagine our woman walking through the park is dressed as a princess—against her better judgement—and this is something we saw at the beginning of the film, her roommate daring her to grow up and stop wearing kiddie costumes for Halloween. So when she observes the terrorist she uses what she’s got—her sexy princess costume, which isn’t easy for her cuz she’s way more hiker-girl than princess-girl. But when the terrorist starts to fall for it, she pulls out all the stops—she has to in order to stop his evil plan…

Now, your turn. Imagine all of the ideas you brainstormed happening on Halloween… and imagine what that does to each idea. Interesting, huh? How one change can change everything.

So month’s over? Did you do it? Did you challenge yourself all along the way? Hope so. Will you ever write any of them? Maybe not, but you never know, your experiences in just DOING the challenge could very well inform a future idea. I guarantee you’ve grown as a writer—any experience will help you do that, so keep getting out there!

And hey, Happy Halloween!

Copyright © Diane Lake

29Oct17

Email Diane a question to Diane@DianeLake.com