Story Generating Part 4

Previous posts showed various ways to generate story ideas, but here's one that can, on the surface, appear difficult, yet can render some surprising results.  You can treat it as a game and also as a writing exercise, but occasionally things fall together using the following method whereby the genesis of a very good story is generated.

Take out your kitchen timer.  Here's mine.

Or, you can use the stopwatch timer on your phone.

Set it for twenty minutes.

Then, pick any book off the bookshelf and open that book to the beginning of any chapter or to the very beginning of the book itself (the first line of the story). 

Type out the first line from the book or the first line from any of that book's chapters.

Here's an example of what I mean.  I chose from my bookshelf, "Don Quixote" by Cervantes.

I open the book to the first chapter and here's the following first line:

In a village of La Mancha the name of which I have no desire to recall, there lived not so long ago one of those gentlemen who always have a lance in the rack, an ancient buckler, a skinny nag, and a greyhound for the chase.

Once I have typed out the first line, I now have twenty minutes on the old kitchen timer (or flashy new phone stopwatch app) to begin writing something that comes after that first line.  And by the way, you can't copy Cervantes' words as that would defeat the purpose.  Make your own story up from there.  Work extemporaneously and don't stop.  Even if it starts to come out as complete nonsense, keep going for twenty minutes until the time expires or you fall into "the zone" (as I like to put it whenever my creative mind starts flowing). 

For example here is the beginning of mine.  I've set the timer, and I typed out the first line ... ready, set, and go!

     In a village of La Mancha the name of which I have no desire to recall, there lived not so long ago one of those gentlemen who always have a lance in the rack, an ancient buckler, a skinny nag, and a greyhound for the chase. 

    I set the book down.  How could I concentrate on Don Quixote at a time like this?

    I sighed and shook my head while I continued to sit upon my leather couch.    

    Time?  What time?  I am out of time.  My deadline was this morning and it's almost noon, and I have yet to finish this article for the blog.  Heck, I haven't even figured out a good topic for the post, much less written it.  But this is what I get for having spent too much time over the weekend celebrating my fifty-first birthday rather than focusing on the situation at hand.  You would think at my age I would behave a little more responsibly and have my act together.  Apparently, not!  

    But it was quite a party on Saturday, that's for certain.  My head hurt all day on Sunday as a result of the tequila shots John and Tracie and Martin insisted upon at that ... What was the name of the place we ended up?

    Then there was a knock at the front door.  I went to answer it and looked through the peep hole.  There was a uniformed police officer standing on my front porch ...

As you can see, the first line I chose led into the beginnings of a story, one that is completely my own.  I'm not sure where this particular story might lead, but at least it's under way.  And you can do the same thing, too.  Play around with this idea and see where it leads you.

Again, this is just one of many devices you can use to jumpstart your writing and get you moving.  If you have any of your own, share them as I would love to hear about some other great ideas to spur creativity.