It’s healthy for a writer to go off the rails every so
often.
A while back, my older sister and I used to compose
comical “seals of approval” for each other, usually with themes like Disney
films, the Narnia series, or the
computer game Oregon Trail. Of course, due to sibling-fueled escalation, these
tokens grew and multiplied, each outdoing its predecessor in outright
silliness, until—I’m pretty sure my sister thought of it first—the seal was a
story. It was a story that made no sense.
Granted, we were trying to make them
make no sense, but considering the fact that we were kids at the time, the
results were more psychedelic than we could ever have imagined. And they almost made sense. They were half-page
long Rube Goldberg machines built out of fantastic plot devices and bizarre ex
machinas.
Now, I present this to you as another writing challenge.
(I’ve done this before in a collegiate creative writing class, FYI.)
So here’s what you do: first, go crazy (it helps). Second,
think of a destination—for example, how to find a burrito. Finally, slam out a
rough draft using every single weird thing you can think of. Throw in the
kitchen sink. Throw in the sinking kitchen! Just make sure that, by the end of
the process, you have something that is logical and has absolutely no bearing
on reality.
I’ll provide a sample, using the example destination I
provided above. Here we go…
HOW TO FIND A
BURRITO
To begin, put a ball of cheese in your pocket and take a
running leap off the high diving board when the pool has no water. This should
anger the minor sea god Chlorinus (demoted for introducing Alka-Seltzer to
Neptune’s domain), causing him to blast you into a harp seal—a species
considerably more padded than the regular non-obese human and therefore able to
withstand the fall to the pool bottom. Before Chlorinus realizes he’s
essentially saved your life, you should be then rescued by the Humane Society
that has mistaken you for a maltreated beagle, whisking you away towards their
secret headquarters dedicated to making animals less “humane”. You should
resume your normal form before they equip you with tactical assault weapons
(again, Chlorinus was a minor deity),
and you’ll have to sneak yourself into the Society’s database to search for
hot-air balloon services, replacement bulldozer parts, and rubber band
factories. Since those first two data files are basically useless, you’ll then
have to find the second-best rubber band factory so that you can construct a
tennis racket completely out of rubber bands. This should attract the notorious
Tennis Toad; when he appears on the horizon, bring out the cheese from your
pocket, which at this point should be so old and fuzzy that it resembles a
tennis ball. When the Tennis Toad eats the ball in his enthusiasm, though,
he’ll realize he’s been tricked and will slam your racket down over your
head—but since it’s made of rubber bands, this will only cause you minor damage
while the elastic rebound will catapult the Toad into the lower atmosphere.
It’s at this point, at the apex of his flight, that you must ask him if he can
see a burrito from up there.
Ta da!
…So, unless you work for Looney Tunes or you develop
those arbitrary fantasy quests, this exercise might not be so helpful you. It
was for me; abandoning reasonable plot lines is oddly relaxing, and it made the
writing flow easier. Or at least faster.
But don’t ask me why it was so easy to think of all that
nonsense.
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