Last week I posted a batch of creative writing sparks just for novelists to inspire some craziness during the launch of NaNoWriMo (“National Novel Writing Month”)

Now it’s a week later. Many writers have quit. Still others are beginning to lose steam. So I’m offering another batch of Instigation to possibly keep the fires burning weirdly.

Remember: finishing is not enough. You have to GO CRAZY! The glee of the twisted is a communicable disease that many readers love to catch. Good luck.

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+ Your character is desperate. Literally have them make a sacrifice. To a named deity. Even if it’s just a silly, imaginary one, like “The Great God of Caffeine” or “Vile Demon Dog of Desperation”

+ Torment with temperature.

+ Plan to give your next scene an extremely unexpected or traumatic outcome. Now START with a summary of that outcome, and write the rest in flashback or in reverse chronology, till you arrive at the cause.

+ Start a chapter with your protagonist listing a catalog (out loud or in their thoughts) of events from the book or their personal history, that begins with the line “These things just aren’t supposed to happen.”)

+ A document or art object that is somehow crucial to your storyline is discovered to be a forgery.

+ Luxuriate in twisted exposition: take a moment to describe the beauty in something disgusting or offensive.

+ At the start of the next chapter or scene, repeat the first sentence of your novel. Then precede to contradict it or reveal a new shade of its meaning.

+ Unveil a character’s irrational fear of a relatively banal object in the current setting (cellophane wrapping, ceramic mugs, aluminum picture frames, leather sofas, birch trees, suede…the more mundane the better).

+ Play fortune cookie with your book title or opening line: add “in bed” or “in the mail” after it and see where it takes you.

+ A character your protagonist expected to appear in the next sequence has disappeared or gone missing. Let them investigate the mystery…and reveal a dark secret in the process.

+ Unexpectedly, a parent arrives on the scene. And he/she/it is furious.

+ Turn a minor character into a sage. Or take a minor character’s passing comment earlier in the book, and give it more ominous weight now that you are further into the story.

+ Unmask one of your most trustworthy characters as a liar or fake!

+ Creatively employ the following words and phrases on your next page (force yourself to fit them all on one page — bonus points if they fit in one paragraph): bone shards, apparition, jitter, rocket, smear, rabid, dread, puncture

+ Uh-oh: dead batteries. Rob something the character(s) take(s) for granted of its energy.

+ Make your next scene or chapter your “Alien” moment. And by “Alien” I mean an interruption that is as outrageously unexpected as the “chest-bursting” scene from the Ridley Scott film: surprise everyone with an eruption of something astounding that had been hiding in plain sight all along.

+ Write the last scene of your book. But not the one you plotted. The one you will use to foil those readers who always jump to the end before it’s finished. THEN go back to where you were before. That’ll teach them!

+ Stop siding with the good guys so much. Let evil flourish for awhile.

More here.

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If these work for you, share them with your writer friends. Got more crazy ideas? Comments welcome.

NaNoWriMo — aka National Novel Writing Month — launched today (and I have a suspicion that Starbucks’ stock will, too)! Since I know that a lot of writers follow this blog, I thought it might be cool if I shared some “Instigation” prompts just for novelists who are speeding through a caffeinated session of binge writing but hitting roadblocks along the way.

These prompts are intended to help you get over those hurdles more than just help you get started — but whatever they do, I hope they instigate you to take your book in a weirder direction than you ever imagined. Because “finishing” in a month isn’t good enough…you have to get CRAZY!

I hope this injection of the dark side helps in some way. And you can always come back here and read the whole Instigation department of The Goreletter for more ideas. Good luck! — Mike Arnzen
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+ Unexpectedly kill a character. Have your protagonist hear their dying words…but only partially.

+ Take a break and reflect: What element of fiction is the weakest in your book right now: character, setting, dialogue or conflict? Choose one. The next time you hit the keyboard, write three paragraphs of prose dedicated just to that element in some way. And make it DARK.

+ The next time you give a description of a character’s physical features, identify a disfigurement. ANYTHING, ranging from an almost imperceptible scar on their brow to giant webbed feet. Expound through dialogue or monologue about what sort of torment that disfigurement causes the character, and how they endure it.

+ Notice the teeth.

+ Give your viewpoint character permission to have a lengthy flight of fantasy, imagining what they would do if they had psychic powers or dreaming how they might solve the main conflict if they had superhuman powers of some kind.

+ Set your next dialogue-driven scene in a foul restaurant. Break up the conversation with intermittent observations of the low hygiene and filthy food. At the end, draw comparisons between the establishment and the novel’s conflict or antagonist.

+ Use a banal object in a scene as a makeshift weapon.

+ “Goth up” a minor character and give them something morbidly pithy or darkly ominous to say.

+ Take your main character’s hostilities and frustrations out on an inconsequential object…but in prose that dramatizes this eruption in an ultraviolent way.

+ Treat weather as a monster.

+ As you head into your next plot point, ask yourself: “And what could make the outcome even worse?”

+ Review your manuscript so far. Seize on an object or image from your description that you mentioned in passing, and bring it back into the picture in an uncannily meaningful way.

+ Something strange is hidden under the desk/table/seat. Your protagonist stumbles on it. This is important to a future scene. But keep the discovery a secret for now. You’ll figure out its importance later.

+ Make your main character sick. Whether a cold or a contracted disease. Use this sickness in an unexpected way to solve a problem.

+ Describe a new character (as they enter the story) in the darkest way you know how, from head to toe. Then make them so nice it’s laughable.

+ Introduce your viewpoint character to Insanity.

+ Reference a horror movie or book in an explicit/overt/obvious way. Then turn it inside-out.

More here.

Funereal Fun

+ Describe an operation or autopsy that transpires in total darkness.
+ Reveal a secret during an open casket funeral.
+ Discover a “pattern” among the gravestones.

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Review the entire “Instigation” department for more prompts. You can share your writing here on The Goreletter by clicking on the ‘comment’ link.

+ Write a poem that draws language directly from all the song titles from a death metal music album. (Here’s a list of some at the Cannibal Corpse fan site).

+ Craft a story around a doctor, dentist, or other health worker who secretly uses one of the job’s instruments for his or her own unhealthy pleasure. (Here’s a list of health care jobs from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics)

+ Describe a mass hallucination in a surreal and dreamy manner, using first person plural (“we”). (Here’s some historical inspiration from the Skeptical Inquirer).

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Review the entire “Instigation” department where you can now post your writing here on The Goreletter!

+ Write about a WOMAN-eating plant (as opposed to just a man-eater).

+ Everyone says they’re afraid of clowns.  What are clowns scared of?  Depict their worst nightmare.

+ Ever heard the expression, “Let your freak flag fly”?  Write a story or poem about a freak nation and its hallowed flag.  (Option: try drawing or describing the iconography of the flag before you begin).

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Review the entire “Instigation” department where you can now post your writing!

+ Reverse the roles in an alien autopsy.

+ Choose an inanimate object from your kitchen cabinet. Give it a mouth. Allow it to unexpectedly speak one morning to a child while he is preparing his own breakfast.

+ Speculate on paper: If you were to eat your own brain matter, what do you think it would taste like? Describe it, appealing to the senses, evoking the texture and flavor. Then begin the next paragraph. See if you can keep going, unfolding a plot that explains why you would be eating your own brain to begin with. Don’t force it…discover it.

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If you publish something instigated by this department, please let me know and I’ll mention it here!

If you like working with twisted prompts, then you might enjoy the new site run by Matt and Natalie Duvall, called “The Write Way”: http://www.thewriteway.org/

+ Write a story from the viewpoint of a groundskeeper at the graveyard — avoiding any of the typical trappings of the horror genre. Make it mundane, even. Avoid using speculative fiction technique at all until you get to page three. Then, if you need to jazz things up, let her rip.

+ Devise a plot surrounding a schoolyard bully…when he’s elderly, in the nursing home.

+ Describe a tuft of stiff hair that has grown in a very unexpected place on your main character’s body.

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If you publish something instigated by this department, let me know and I’ll mention it here! Congratulations this time around to D.W. Green, for his story “Surgical Puppet Theater,” which will appear in the upcoming anthology, Darkened Horizons.

+ Bind a book in something dastardly…but avoid the obvious (lemme guess: skin, right?).
+ There’s a campaign afoot to nominate Cthulhu for president (http://www.cthulhu.org/). Create a Lovecraftian story that satirizes today’s politics.
+ Write a short-short with the title “Surgical Puppet Theater”

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Congratulations to Kathleen J. Trimmer who recently published a short-short called “Getting Off Death Row” in Cthulhu SM (3:13) based loosely on a past Instigation prompt. If you publish something instigated by this department, let me know and I’ll mention it here!

+ What does the moon say to the lycanthrope? Write a monologue.
+ A wife suspects her husband is a serial killer when he’s not. Script their argument one night when he comes home late from work.
+ Torture a competitive eater. Don’t use hotdogs.

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If you publish something instigated by this department, let me know and I’ll mention it here!

+ Dramatize an electroshock therapy session in second person, future tense.
+ Sketch a humorous conversation involving the devil’s accountant.
+ Adapt the features and traits of any cartoon character into a “real” creature or man, exploring the freakish results. (e.g. What would a “Spongebob Squarepants” creature >really< be like, if living flesh in the real world? Write it out, obliterating the original reference to the cartoon in the process.)

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If you publish something instigated by this department, let me know and I’ll mention it here next issue!