Working Up

By Dwayne Phillips

A source of story ideas is the words of other writers. Anything written by anyone will do. Just copy their words until your own start to flow.

I’ve started writing short stories again. They are good writing practice, and what’s more, I like writing short stories. In 2008, I wrote a short story every week and one or two extra for the year. I’ve posted these on Smashwords.com and they are for sale for 99 cents each.  I have earned a grand total of $15 in my first six months of selling eShort-stories (or whatever you call these). I’m not ready to quit my day job, but again, this if fun.

One question that people ask my about writing (so many) short stories is, “Where do you get your ideas?”

One of the sources of short stories is a writing exercise that I learned from author and consultant Jerry Weinberg (geraldmweinberg.com). I also saw this exercise in the movie Finding Forrestor?

Here is the exercise:

• Find a piece of writing, almost anything will do
• transcribe it, just type the words
• type the first sentence
• type the first paragraph
• type the first page or chapter if that is what happens
• at some point, you will start writing your own words
• go back and delete what you copied from someone else

For example, I had a copy of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. I opened to the first page and started typing:

Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton.

That was all I needed. I hit the RETURN key and started typing my own words:

My dad was once the boxing champion of his weight class in his high school. A friend of mine graduated first in his class in his major at college.

This led to a short story about a person who liked to take cross-country walks and some adventure or another that he had while walking.

This exercise works for a couple of reasons. First, typing someone else’s words starts the fingers moving and puts some black spots on an otherwise blank screen or page. Second, the content of the words copied brings to mind experiences and ideas.

Find a piece of writing, almost anything will do

• transcribe it, just type the words
• type the first sentence
• type the first paragraph
• type the first page or chapter if that is what happens
• at some point, you will start writing your own words
• go back and delete what you copied from someone else