July 2017: Holding on to this drainpipe

My fellow writing group participants and I keep inspiration flowing with simple writing exercises. Here’s an account from last night’s gathering of Hunter Story Creators.

Hunter Story Creators

Tonight our writers group did a writing exercise by randomly picking a sentence from a random book Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett. We had 5 mins to free-write, starting our story with the sentence ‘Holding on to this drainpipe’. When finished, we each read our stories aloud.

Facade Drainpipe Decay Ram Cornice Structure Image credit: http://maxpixel.freegreatpicture.com/Facade-Drainpipe-Decay-Ram-Cornice-Structure-526250

We were tapping into the very first idea that comes into our minds, and we discovered some pretty interesting things about how we each develop our stories:

  • For Maree, the drain was a metaphor for depression (in fact, the drainpipe was an underground drainpipe, where for others it was a pipe on the outside of a building, some many stories up). The drain was a big black hole and her character was already inside, clinging to the grate above.
  • For Di, the drainpipe was literal, and introduced a problem that had to be solved (a person hanging from a pipe, 6 stories…

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