Block Buster
Ideas To Thwart Writer’s Block
What 3 Words
Today’s #TuesdayTip is a great way to generate word prompts for a creative writing piece.
What3Words.com is a revolutionary way of pinpointing a precise location anywhere on the earth’s surface. Rather than trying to rely on the vagaries of describing a place using street names and postcodes (which are subject to change and in some apps, simply wrong!) the makers of the service have divided the planet into 3 metre x 3 metre squares and assigned each a permanent, unique ‘address’ consisting of three random words.
The beauty of the system is that it allows the precise identification of a location, such as a doorway or entrance, or even the middle of a field!
Emergency services all over the world have adopted it, since you can easily pinpoint the precise position of a casualty, rather than relying on the caller describing their location. It works using GPS (which all smart phones have) and once you’ve installed the app, no further data connection is required – so as long as you are in a reasonably clear location and your phone can get a GPS satellite signal, it will tell you the unique combination of three words that identify your location.
You can also use their website to find a place and retrieve its 3 words. This is what I suggest you do today. For safety reasons, if you are going to make your story publicly available DO NOT USE YOUR HOME ADDRESS! Instead, why not find the 3 Words associated with your favourite landmark?
For example, one of the locations overlapping The Louvre Museum in Paris is ///seasons.sharper.scan
So there are my three word prompts. Now can I incorporate all three words into a short written piece?
Remember the rules:
What3Words.com is a revolutionary way of pinpointing a precise location anywhere on the earth’s surface. Rather than trying to rely on the vagaries of describing a place using street names and postcodes (which are subject to change and in some apps, simply wrong!) the makers of the service have divided the planet into 3 metre x 3 metre squares and assigned each a permanent, unique ‘address’ consisting of three random words.
The beauty of the system is that it allows the precise identification of a location, such as a doorway or entrance, or even the middle of a field!
Emergency services all over the world have adopted it, since you can easily pinpoint the precise position of a casualty, rather than relying on the caller describing their location. It works using GPS (which all smart phones have) and once you’ve installed the app, no further data connection is required – so as long as you are in a reasonably clear location and your phone can get a GPS satellite signal, it will tell you the unique combination of three words that identify your location.
You can also use their website to find a place and retrieve its 3 words. This is what I suggest you do today. For safety reasons, if you are going to make your story publicly available DO NOT USE YOUR HOME ADDRESS! Instead, why not find the 3 Words associated with your favourite landmark?
For example, one of the locations overlapping The Louvre Museum in Paris is ///seasons.sharper.scan
So there are my three word prompts. Now can I incorporate all three words into a short written piece?
Remember the rules:
- Set yourself a time limit.
- Write without stopping, editing or overthinking.
- Write whatever comes to mind and don’t worry if it doesn’t make sense.
- It doesn’t matter if it has nothing to do with the scene that you are stuck on.
If you are a writer with a tip to share, or fancy writing a fictional interview between you and one of your characters, please feel free to email me.
Until next time,
Paul
