TuesdayTips183

Today’s #TuesdayTip is another Block Buster – a short exercise to either bust your writer’s block, or just a fun writing challenge to practise your skills.
Last year, I set an exercise where you found a news story, extracted the key details, then wrote a fictionalised account of what happened. #Tip136 Getting To The Meat Of It.
Today’s tip is going to take that principle and strip it back even further.
Go to your favourite news source and pick a headline.
That’s it. Don’t even read the story.
Now use that headline to write your own news story.
The fun thing about this activity is that there are loads of ways to approach it.
For example:

• Take a headline that features names. Tabloids assume that their readers know who ‘Kate’ is. Will your story feature the Kate they are referencing, or are you going to feature a different Kate?
• Take a headline that doesn’t feature names. This frees you up to be as inventive as you like.
• Take a headline that just sounds quirky. Man finds Taylor Swift’s face in Greggs pasty is replete with possibilities.
• Take a headline that is banal and desperately dull. Planning committee to meet Tuesday. What are they planning? Why Tuesday?

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.

Have fun,
Paul