Writer’s Roulette

This is an exercise I invented for a retreat I hosted over the summer and I found it incredibly fun and helpful. If nothing else, anyone who needs a writing prompt to kick off the week should find this useful. I’ve printed out two pages, one with a bunch of genres and another with a bunch of thematic elements, tropes and the like. Each page was cut up and tossed into a baggy.

I draw two from the genre baggy and three from the thematic elements baggy, put them together and write for 25 minutes. It’s an incredibly refreshing process, simply cutting back and taking off down a loosely defined path, a great blending of direction and creative freedom. 

Here’s the results from today’s exercise, completely raw and unedited—straight from Microsoft Word to the blog. I’ll be putting something like this up weekly (just the start to something larger) with a new prompt and story results. Give this exercise a shot for yourself, either do your own random process or use the results below. Just write!

2 Genres

Post Apocalypse

Contemporary Fantasy

3 Themes/Tropes/Whatever

Man vs God

Urban Setting

Love Triangle

Add in 25 minutes and...enjoy!

Juniper Joy ran weeping across the parking lot, dodging the overripe blackberry bushes growing up from the skeletons of Volkswagen beetles. Glossy silvers, blues and greens peeked through foliage and rust, winking at her as she ran, tattered skirt whipping behind her like a banner, mirroring her tangled mane of chestnut. Not that she’d ever seen a chestnut. They were long extinct. Like cellphones and cellophane.

                “Juney!” Maverick called from behind her.

               

His dad had owned the lot before, back when the beetles did more than just sat like colorful rocks. They didn’t look extinct but she supposed they were, too.

               

“Juney!”

                The world blurred, colors blurring behind the tears to blend into a solid myriad. She kept running. Rings weren’t supposed to go extinct. That’s why they were circles, ‘cause they went on forever. But nothing lasted forever.

                The hem of her skirt caught on a blackberry bush and she left behind another patch of fabric, fluttering like a broken bird.

                Rings and forever weren’t for her. They couldn’t be.

                She fled the parking lot, running into a building that had once been called a bank. Maverick wouldn’t follow her onto unholy ground. Paper had brought about the end of the golden era he liked to say, but she didn’t see how. She didn’t need to; she wasn’t lined up to be the next holy man.

                Broken glass littered the tile floor, crunching under her boot like gravel as she flew past. She couldn’t stay here. Being alone was good, but the empty vault in the back wasn’t good to be around when anyone was like this. Whatever this was. Was she still crying?

                She wiped her eyes, leaping through the brass frame of a door that was meant to be full of glass and spin in place like a top so people could go through. Why the folks that used this place for their foul rituals needed such a fancy door instead of a normal one was just as mysterious as the empty vault. It cried sometimes at night. Nobody but Maverick believed her, but she’d heard it.

                Juniper took to alleys and kept running until her sides hurt. Breathing hurt. And her reflection in the remaining grimy windows of the dead buildings was red-faced and sweaty. Definitely not someone for rings. What would she do if her face turned red for eternity?

                “You look lost,” said a voice behind her.

                She jumped, then caught sight of the speaker’s reflection in the dirty window.

“Avarice McCoy,” she snarled as she spun around. “I am not in the mood for your foolishness.”

His lips found hers, capturing them in a dance of flesh on flesh. Calloused hands cupped her cheeks, fingertips brushing the edges of the tangled mess she called her hair. They were cool against her flushed face and she found herself leaning into them for a moment, for that reason alone. It had nothing to do with the way the kiss poured into her like liquid fire, filling her belly with a yearning for more.

She jerked away and cut loose with a slap that left her palm and fingers stinging. Avarice’s face was just as dirty as the windows, blonde hair turned bronze from too long in the downtown ruins. A red handprint glowed beneath the grime, distorted by his cheeks lifting as he grinned.

“You keep coming back here, makes me wonder which of us is really foolish.”

“Maverick proposed.”

Blue eyes froze, hardening like the top of pond in winter. “Oh.”

“I can’t get married,” she said. “The garden’s not ready.”

“And that’s all you care about, isn’t it?” Avarice said. “Those mushrooms aren’t as magic as you think they are.”

 

She ignored his words and pushed past his hard body. Whatever intelligent creator had seen fit to make Avarice McCoy’s arms harder than stone had to have it out for her, there weren’t another explanation. Maverick was trouble. Avarice was more trouble.

“Just a little bit more and I can leave on a caravan,” Juniper said, stomping down another alley. “Trade them along the coast. Those I don’t use for the caravan anyhow.”

“Future’s not something that should be looked into, Juniper,” Avarice said and his footfalls sounded on the artificially hard ground, following her.

                “You sound like Maverick.” She made a face at him over her shoulder. “Thought scroungers were less superstitious than holy men.”

                “He’s not a holy man, yet,” Avarice said. “And it’s not superstition. It’s good old common sense. You know anyone who ever ate them mushrooms and didn’t go mad?”