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Creative writing hack I picked up at a comic con panel in Portland
I was sitting in on a Q&A last March and the speaker said to use a random conversation you overhear as a prompt, but change the setting completely. For example, I heard a guy complain about his car breaking down and turned it into a story set in a medieval blacksmith shop. Anyone else try taking overheard stuff and pushing it into a different time or place?
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emmam6726d ago
Tried this once with an argument about someone's Netflix buffering and set it in a 1920s radio station, ended up writing a whole scene about a guy shaking a vacuum tube like it owed him money. I'm pretty sure that story is still sitting in my drafts folder where it belongs.
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Man, my version of this would be taking a conversation about someone's leaky faucet and setting it in ancient Rome where a plumber's toga keeps falling off while he's trying to fix an aqueduct. Pretty sure I'd end up with a story more focused on the plumber's wardrobe malfunction than the actual plot point. Definitely learned the hard way that not every overheard rant translates well when you throw it into a different century.
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